


To You In The Future

by DiurnalDays



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (Not) Another Stucky Big Bang 2020, (diverges during the events of Infinity War), (most of the minor character death is in a flashback though), Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Bucky Barnes, Body Horror, Clint/Natasha (mentioned briefly), Cyberpunk, Cyborgs, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, Human Experimentation, Immortality, M/M, Middle-aged Stucky, Minor Character Death, Nakia/T'Challa (mentioned briefly), Nonbinary Character, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Political Themes, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Profanity, Road Trips, Science Fiction, Spaceships, Transhumanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 51,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28038855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiurnalDays/pseuds/DiurnalDays
Summary: Deep down, Steve knew that war would one day come to find them again, but after everything he had seen in his lifetime, he didn’t want these past few decades of peace to end. After all, two hundred years had already passed him by, and by all scientific estimations two hundred more would pass before the serum expired and he met his eventual end.--In 2218 A.D., humanity is finally resettling an Earth devastated by ecological disaster. Steve and Bucky, rendered nearly immortal by the serum, have found peace for the past few decades living in the first North American settlement. But the future may not be as peaceful as it seems, and there are secrets awaiting around every corner...
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 36
Kudos: 39
Collections: Not Another Stucky Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MsPooslie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsPooslie/gifts), [luoniiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luoniiel/gifts).



> For the 2020 NASBB, also known as the (Not) Another Stucky Big Bang.
> 
> First of all, thank you to my lovely artists MsPooslie and luoniiel for cheering me on through Discord DMs as I toiled away at writing this fic for the past several months. Both of them illustrated the bright colors and sleek surfaces of Neo Columbia absolutely gorgeously -- I'll attach their artwork to the next few chapters for you guys to look at.
> 
> Second, thank you dani_libertea for graciously beta reading this fic for me! They helped me make this fic the best it could be. You have them to thank for a monologue about a soap bottle in a later chapter. ;)
> 
> As I started writing this fic back in March after realizing that I'd never written a longer Stucky fanfic before, I decided to fill an underexplored niche in the fandom for my first Stucky longfic outing. Whether you have an interest in worldbuilding-heavy cyberpunk or you're just here for some good ol' Stucky, this is absolutely a fic meant for you. And is it a coincidence that I'm posting this only a few days after the release of Cyberpunk 2077? Absolutely yes.
> 
> I will be posting this fic in daily or near-daily installments over the next week. The total word count will be around 51,000 words, give or take. I hope that you guys will enjoy the ride from beginning to end!

* * *

On a certain night in a cold metropolis with buildings extending into the sky, Steve stood alone with the wind whipping through his hair, lost in thought. 

Below his feet, the flying cars of Howard Stark’s dreams -- hovermobiles -- whisked along invisible light rails stretching high above the heads of pedestrians, with hologram signs written in various languages suspended in mid-air all the way down to the pavement several stories below. 

One floating sign across the thoroughfare read, “Happy 50th Independence Day, Neo Columbia!”. Another displayed a timer ticking down to the Independence Day firework celebrations scheduled for midnight alongside a screen displaying the current date -- April 19, 2218. Tomorrow would begin the next fifty years of Neo Columbian prosperity and progress. 

Steve stood on the balcony of the apartment he and Bucky had now lived in for forty years and counting. He could’ve been standing in New York, Washington D.C., or Birnin Zana, were it not for the iconic cool lights and faint buzzing of Neo Columbia in the twenty-third century. Their decision to settle down in this place wasn’t solely because of the apartment’s city views or the proximity to the administrative buildings in the center of the city. 

No, Bucky had insisted on purchasing this place mainly because there were multiple clear escape routes across the rooftops and raised streets around the perimeter. 

After many years of living through upheaval and chaos, Bucky had said to him one night that nothing would last forever. Not peace, not domestic life, not even their own impossibly long lives. 

Deep down, Steve knew this too. He knew that war would one day come to find them again, but after everything he had seen in his lifetime, he didn’t want these past few decades of peace to end. 

After all, two hundred years had already passed him by, and by all scientific estimations two hundred more would pass before the serum expired and he met his eventual end. 

Then again, by all scientific estimations Steve should’ve died every time he’d fallen deathly ill with pneumonia as a teenager and then struggled out of bed to help his Ma with the dishes. 

He should’ve died when he’d pulled the Valkyrie into a nosedive into the Arctic, bracing himself with the certainty that he’d meet Bucky again in the afterlife -- and then didn’t. 

He should’ve died when he’d plunged several hundred feet into the Potomac, his body riddled with broken bones and wounds that should’ve killed anyone who didn’t possess the super serum’s benefits.

He should’ve died in 2018, when he’d refused to stand down as he stared, defiant, at the face of the man who could’ve brought the end of half the universe with a single snap of his fingers.

By all means, Steve should’ve been six feet under a thousand times over by now. And yet, he’d fought against all odds -- and won.

Steve let his thoughts wander back to the victory in 2018. In the years after Thanos’s defeat at the hands of the Avengers, he had been the happiest he’d ever been before or since. He and Bucky had married each other in a quiet ceremony with just the Avengers and a few of Becca’s grand-nieces and grand-nephews in attendance. No media, he and Bucky had insisted to Tony, and not just because Bucky had been formally pardoned by the U.S. government only a few months prior. 

No, Steve and Bucky’s wedding had just been for them, not for Captain America or the Winter Soldier or whoever the world at large thought they were.

From then on, Steve and Bucky had traveled together across the world -- sometimes with just each other, other times with the Avengers or at Wakanda’s request -- to defeat injustice wherever it was to be found. Back then, there had been purpose to their life.

Even though the world of the post-Thanos era had been plagued by hardship after hardship, Steve remembered that time largely as a time of calm. Upon finally having a few years just for himself, he’d appreciated the quiet moments between battles more. He also observed the passage of time more closely than before with the certainty that he wasn’t under the threat of one day awakening a hundred years into the future.

He had noticed changes, changes as small as the gradual disappearance of the small coffee shops he and Bucky had once loved, to changes as large as the treaties signed by international alliances, codifying a threshold of sentience that no future android could cross.

And eventually, he had noticed that he and Bucky seemed to be physically frozen in their mid twenties, even as the rest of the Avengers -- besides Thor -- began to show their age with time. 

Not even Dr. Erskine had predicted the extent to which the serum prevented Steve’s -- and by extension Bucky’s -- aging. The serum preventing cell decay when Steve and Bucky were in ice was one thing; the serum becoming an unforeseen elixir of immortality was another. 

As soon as he realized what the serum was doing to them, Steve had volunteered himself for the scientific inquiries that had quickly opened up regarding the potential medical applications of the serum -- as long as the experiments were strictly only used for medical purposes, as stipulated in the contracts that Tony and his team of lawyers had helped him revise into the early hours in the morning. 

Bucky had opted out of these studies, which Steve had understood, grimly remembering the photographs and clinically written lab reports tucked within manila folders. He’d adamantly defended Bucky’s right to privacy whenever a scientist had not-so-subtly wondered aloud if Steve’s husband would come by the lab sometime. 

The serum replicas that soon followed those experiments led to scientific breakthrough after breakthrough. Soon, Steve felt as if medical technology had advanced centuries faster than what anyone -- Tony, Banner, and Shuri included -- could’ve ever dreamed of. Still, the serum replicas never achieved the same superhuman abilities and immortality that Steve and Bucky now had to live with -- and that was just as well. Steve wouldn’t wish immortality on just anyone.

As the decades passed by and the world advanced into the late twenty-first century, Steve’s friends had passed away one by one. First was Tony, who died in his sixties of heart failure after donating much of his wealth to charity and raising Morgan to become an inventor just like her father once was.  
  


Then went Natasha and Clint, who’d retired from active duty years earlier and raised a dog together -- Charlie -- in Bed-Stuy, though they’d still occasionally accepted black-ops missions up until their uneventful deaths from old age.  
  
Then, T’Challa passed his crown down to his and Nakia’s daughter while laying on his deathbed, handing her a golden age of prosperity and innovation unlike any Wakanda had seen before. 

Steve attended each and every funeral -- some informal (Natasha and Clint’s, held at a small chapel in upstate New York), others grandiose (Tony and T’Challa’s, in their own ways). Deep down, he’d expected all this to happen ever since he’d carried Peggy’s flag-draped coffin on his shoulder. He cried silently after each ceremony into Bucky’s shoulder.

Every death was a reminder that Steve was a lighthouse in an ever-changing sea; an eternal symbol, and more than a man who could live and die. Each death brought with it a gap in Steve’s life, a person he could no longer look to in times of thick and thin.

Still, his friends had passed away after long and well-lived lives, and so Steve let them go, wiping his tears into a handkerchief Bucky conveniently always had on hand. Then, Steve would square his shoulders and march onwards, at peace with the knowledge that each and every one of his friends had died without regrets.

The only death Steve couldn’t make peace with was Sam’s. Somehow, he’d assumed that his right-hand man would always be by his side, even after Sam retired from the Avengers and smiled with crow’s feet around his eyes. They’d continued going on runs together -- that is, until Sam bent over coughing during a run in D.C. and Steve had to carry him to a hospital in his arms. 

From then on, they’d walk together at a slower pace -- first through every park in D.C. and New York, then through each and every state and national Park on camping trips that Bucky sometimes joined them on when he wasn’t on a mission. 

The late nights Steve spent with both his husband and his best man sitting around a campfire laughing over old, embarrassing stories about their friends had been some of the best moments of his centuries-long life.

So the moment Steve heard from Sharon’s communications hologram that Sam had died of a sudden stroke in the early morning, the weight of everything that had changed over the course of Steve’s life came crashing down onto his shoulders and he sank, quietly crying into Bucky’s arms on nights where working himself to the bone for the greater good didn’t ( _couldn’t_ ) distract him from a deeper sense of loss. 

Eventually, though, life goes on. And so it had. Steve threw himself into charitable cause after charitable cause with a thousand mens’ worth of stamina ( _and coffee_ , Bucky would sometimes grouse when Steve fell asleep with his head buried in a stack of papers at his desk). Back then, he could only hope that he was doing the right thing. 

This continued well into the twenty-second century. Before Steve knew it, every member of the Avengers except for Steve and Bucky had been born in the mid to late twenty-first century, having little to no memory of a time before space travel and the elimination of almost all the world’s diseases. 

Steve was grateful that the world was better and safer than it had ever been, but the world was now also irrevocably different from the one he once knew. He was a vestige of a bygone era where the world had been constantly consumed by uncertainty and turmoil. 

Even though Steve worked well with the new Avengers, seamlessly learned new social customs and technology with his serum-enhanced learning capacities, traded in his old tac armor for newer, sleeker fatigues and bodysuits that interfaced with the technology that now lined every inch and corner of the world’s cities, he felt that a widening chasm stood between him and the young heroes he worked with. They regarded him as a relic, asking him about the twenty-first century and glancing sideways at him during briefings as if he would need the specifics of nano-drugs or bionic augmentations explained to him twice.

Steve’s memories from the rest of the twenty-second century after his retirement were at this point all a blur. 

He’d settled into retirement with Bucky -- or as much as he could when he was still actively involved with several dozen humanitarian organizations, whose importance had exponentially increased with the arrival of a new century. This was because humanity had progressed rapidly well into the twenty-second century, disastrously so. The oceans flooded coastlines, the skies turned dark and thick with smog, and natural disaster after natural disaster razed the earth into dust and decrepit rubble. Peace once again became a distant dream as uprisings and wars tore apart once prosperous nations until almost nothing remained.

During those long years of the world seemingly hurtling towards the end times, the only respite Steve had found was returning every evening to a home where Bucky was, wherever that happened to be. 

Still, one man could only do so much. For that matter, there was little that any one superhuman could really do against problems that couldn’t be solved through force. Steve knew that both now and back then. 

Steve’s grip on the balcony railing tightened. The sensation of cold steel bit into his palms. Even knowing that there was only so much blame that one person could carry on their shoulders, the destruction of Earth was Steve’s one and only regret for the life he’d lived. Nearly a century afterwards, Steve still awoke in a cold sweat remembering countries consumed by flames, razed earth cracking underfoot as he endlessly searched his dreams for survivors in tragedy after tragedy that soon all blended together into one hazy nightmare.

No matter how much he wanted to finally leave that part of the past behind him, he still remembered everything that had led up to the Migration.

The Migration had been humanity’s last-ditch attempt to save itself after decades of ecological and humanitarian disasters. An international council of the last remaining countries on Earth had gathered and decided to pool humanity’s last remaining resources into one project -- the mass evacuation of humanity into space. 

After a decade of historic international cooperation, the remnants of humanity would leave the surface of the Earth within a giant spaceship constructed for human settlement. The spaceship would drift along in low orbit while the Earth gradually grew more hospitable. That spaceship would be called the Ymir. 

The Ymir, filled to capacity with refugees, teemed with activity for several years. New societies formed within the sprawling living spaces -- as did conflicts and tensions. It quickly became clear that humanity couldn’t be contained in the Ymir’s confines forever, and so plans were drawn up for the creation of a new fleet of spaceships that would take a coalition of humanity to settle new hospitable planets in faraway galaxies. These titanic ships, collectively named the Jötunn **,** would be a brood of giant children based on the Ymir’s basic design. 

In the end, only ten percent of the Earth’s survivors opted to stay in the Ymir and form a collective government titled the Ymir Federation, while the remaining ninety percent opted to leave Earth behind in search of a more hospitable home that they could terraform to their liking. 

Steve and Bucky were part of the group that remained on Earth as part of the Ymir Federation aboard the Ymir. There was only one Earth that they could ever call their home. As long as there was still some hope remaining, they wouldn’t leave. 

Steve had seen Bruce, Thor, and Carol for the last time when the pioneers who would later become known as Greater Humanity boarded the Jötunn ships that would carry them to unexplored new star systems and beyond. He’d embraced Bruce and Thor and congratulated Carol on leading Greater Humanity towards a better future. Deep down, he knew that he would never see any of them again, but he'd already said so many goodbyes that another three didn't feel so painful anymore. 

Steve remembers silently gazing out of a window into space as the ships of Greater Humanity faded into the distant stars, never to be heard from again. And the Earth, now a desolate shell of its former self, remained. 

The Ymir perpetually drifted along in low orbit as the great dust storms slowly calmed and the ocean turned blue again. The humans who chose to stay in the Ymir were organized by the governing council into several alternating cohorts, only one of which would remain active at any one time while the rest slept in cryostasis pods to conserve energy. Resources such as food, water, and electricity would be tightly conserved and recycled, while new metals would only be created from scrap. Plastics would be gradually replaced by recycled composite materials. Many of those practices would continue into the modern day both in Neo Columbia and the Ymir Federation.

Days became months that became years that became decades. To Steve today, the sterile interiors of the Ymir were now even more distant to him than the bustling streets of pre-war Brooklyn or the hubbub of early twenty-first century Manhattan. 

The decades spent aboard the Ymir were, if anything, most similar to the decades he and Bucky had spent in cryo for the latter half of the twentieth century, each mundane day blending into the next as if they were walking through an endless dream. Only this time, Steve hadn’t floated in an ice floe in the Arctic, and Bucky hadn’t lost control of his own body to HYDRA.

Instead, they had made themselves useful. Bucky had spent his long hours on duty carefully tending to the crop strains preserved in the Ymir’s greenhouses. Meanwhile, Steve had carefully monitored the Earth’s recovery as if the Earth was in a cryo freeze of its own. 

When both he and Bucky were off duty and out of their sleep pods, they had quietly enjoyed each other’s company. Steve picked up drawing and painting again, whiling away long hours of wakefulness with depictions of the people and places he’d known in his past life. Meanwhile, Bucky took up one hobby after another, dabbling in a little bit of everything. Those days had been good, given the circumstances, if bland. 

After a while, Steve had become content with living out the rest of his long life floating through space with Bucky by his side. There had been no more wars left to fight, no more governments or organizations to represent, nothing left to tear him and Bucky apart again. He was tired, and all he had wanted was rest. 

That was true, until the Aegis Project had come to fruition. 

When the Earth’s temperatures and oxygen levels began slowly righting themselves to pre-Migration levels, plans had come under discussion by a council of Ymir Federation leaders for the gradual resettlement of the Ymir’s inhabitants onto the Earth’s surface. Several colonies built from modified spacecraft would be evenly distributed across various geographic regions, planting the seeds of humanity’s eventual return to prosperity and progress. 

The resettlement plan was dubbed the Aegis Project -- a shield that would safeguard humanity’s future. 

Steve had sat in on the talks expecting that he’d be recruited into the team that would scope out and prepare a good location for the first Aegis Project settlement, but it quickly became clear that the Ymir Federation’s governing council had already assembled a team of younger, hardier augmented individuals who were better trained than Steve at braving the untamed wastelands. The soldiers and laborers that would accompany them would all be man-made androids instead of now-scarce humans. Not for the first time in his life, Steve found himself out of his element. 

He then knew that the world no longer needed Steve Rogers, a weary warrior who’d far outlived his time. Rather, the world needed Captain America, an unchanging symbol of hope and perseverance. 

Steve had negotiated a deal with the heads of the newly founded Aegis Project. In exchange for his service as a political advisor and figurehead, protections for the rights of superhumans and ordinary people alike would be written into the foundational laws of Neo Columbia. The serum samples preserved from the late twenty-first century would only be used for future scientific advancements and not for military use. Additionally, neither himself nor Bucky would ever be obligated to join the Neo Columbian military as combatants, and Bucky specifically would be permitted to live the life of a private citizen while his identity as anything but Steve Roger’s life partner would be expunged from the public record. The Aegis Project had readily agreed to his terms, laying the foundation for the peaceful life he and Bucky now led. 

Captain America would then become known as simply The Captain, the figurehead of the Aegis Project’s North American division. Imagery of a shield-wielding peaceful protector looming larger than life over glittering, beautiful metropolises proliferated in the Aegis Project’s messaging to recruit their first few thousand pioneers from the Ymir Federation. 

The first North American settlement had been Neo Columbia, a self-sufficient city-state. Each colony in the Aegis Project model would have its own Tower Aegis, a pod-shaped spacecraft modified into a gargantuan tower, extending from the Earth’s surface through the clouds and up into the stratosphere. A single Tower Aegis could sustain tens of thousands of people within its thick circular hull. The goal was to eventually plant enough Tower Aegises on the Earth’s surface that the Ymir mothership could be docked and turned into scrap metal to be evenly distributed across all Aegis Project settlements. While that goal still hadn’t come to fruition fifty years later, Neo Columbia itself became a stunningly successful prototype colony that would provide the example for all future Aegis Project settlements to follow. 

In the beginning, Neo Columbia consisted solely of Tower Aegis, as the outside wastelands were still too harsh for human habitation. The cultivation of a proper metropolis took several years of terraforming and construction using Tower Aegis as a home base of operations, with at least half of that time used for cleaning the mounds of plastic debris and garbage left behind by previous civilizations. Years later, when a network of residences and businesses had been constructed around Tower Aegis’s base, like roots fanning out from a tree, Tower Aegis had been compartmentalized into the sole administrative center and supply line of Neo Columbia.

Today, fifty years after Tower Aegis had been planted in the wastelands, few of Neo Columbia’s residents remembered a time when human life had solely consisted of drifting in and out of slumber aboard a sterile spacecraft. Owing to the governance of the democratically elected President of Neo Columbia and the council of Senators they worked with, Neo Columbia was prosperous, vibrant, and above all else peaceful.

Of course, Steve had his misgivings about the Neo Columbian government. He'd seen every way that a government could go wrong and do wrong over the centuries. Neo Columbia was no different, even if the government branded itself as leading a society that had moved beyond war, disease, and famine. Beneath the smooth, sleek surfaces of Neo Columbia’s structures, traces of inequality, poverty, and suffering still lingered.

But more importantly, the citizens within Neo Columbia’s walls were safe, and Steve and Bucky were happy together. This was the future he’d fought for for centuries. He’d do his best to improve Neo Columbia from the inside if it meant that each and every citizen of Neo Columbia could live a long, fulfilling life within the city of lights. 

And how beautiful those lights really were. Steve looked up at the skyline of futuristic skyscrapers encircling Tower Aegis. Each glowed brightly, decorated with hologram billboards and pulsing lights in the dark. Behind the skyscrapers loomed the imposing outer walls of Neo Columbia, lit sparsely with guide lights at night to warn wayward hovercraft of its presence. 

Above it all, Tower Aegis stood in the center of Neo Columbia as a testament to human innovation and determination, lights winking faintly in the smog. 

The hologram door audibly fizzled and reformed as Bucky stepped out onto the balcony and unobtrusively sidled up to Steve’s side.

“You’re staring off into space again, Steve,” Bucky noted, voice low. “Got something on your mind?”

Steve chuckled, looping his arm around Bucky’s shoulders. He turned away from the Neo Columbian skyline to look instead into Bucky’s eyes. “Just you.”

Bucky huffed fondly. “I don’t think that line has worked on me since the thirties, punk.”

“Jerk.” Steve pressed a kiss to Bucky’s cheek, then another. Bucky snorted, nudging Steve with his nose. Steve took the cue, tilting his head so that his lips could dovetail together with Bucky’s.

After a moment, Steve pulled away with a puff of hot breath so that he could entwine his fingers together with Bucky’s, rings pressed together cool and smooth. 

Although Steve wasn’t usually one for overly sappy sentimentality, the rings were a reminder that they would always be together even when they were apart. After all, Steve’s only constant as the world changed around him was always Bucky -- his best friend, his family, the love of his life. No matter if they lived in Brooklyn, Avengers Tower, Wakanda, or Neo Columbia, if they had each other, they had a home. 

Steve let his eyes slip down Bucky’s body in silent admiration. Even now, with two hundred years under his belt, Bucky sported a scant few gray hairs along his hairline and only the faintest trace of wrinkles around his eyes. His shoulder-length was pulled back in a bun, stray tufts of hair tumbling over his temples and forehead. The smartly fitted suit hugging his body around the curvature of his muscles completed the image of a rugged yet well-groomed young man. He didn’t look a day over forty, maybe not even thirty-five. 

Bucky met Steve’s roving gaze. “Liking what you’re seeing?”

Steve licked his lips. “You’re dressed up nicely for something tonight. Got a hot date?”

“I’m looking at him right now,” Bucky replied, playing along with a smirk. “And I’m just dressed up for a little event called the Neo Columbian Independence Day gala. Maybe you’ve heard of it.” 

“Maybe I have.” Steve sighed. “It’s a little hard to miss when it’s all that anybody talks about at work these days. I was thinking that we could enjoy the view together a little longer.” 

He gave Bucky a meaningful glance. _Distract me. Let’s talk about something,_ anything _else._

Bucky didn’t respond, his eyes flickering across the road to the timer counting down to the Independence Day fireworks show at midnight. His lips formed a thin line, the flirtiness dropping from his expression, though he didn’t move away from Steve. 

“I don’t think we have enough time for that, pal,” Bucky observed plainly. “I don’t know how early we should get there, but I’m guessing pretty early. Never been before.”

Steve rubbed his thumb over Bucky’s. “We can tell the hovermobile to go faster.” 

Bucky arched an eyebrow. “And risk running into traffic along the way? Didn’t know the view was so important to you.”

“Hey, I remember we shelled out extra for a view when we bought this place,” Steve pointed out. “Might as well get our bang for our buck.”

Bucky rolled his eyes with fond exasperation at Steve’s not-so-subtle joke. 

“The balcony is cold, Steve. I doubt your shirt is doing very much to keep you warm.” His voice was more insistent this time, though his eyes did roam down Steve’s exposed arms approvingly.

“C’mon, Buck.” Steve leaned in close to Bucky, eyelashes low and teasing. He’d worked on his pick-up lines over the years while trying to match Bucky’s romantic prowess. “There’s no place warmer than a super soldier’s arms. Maybe you could spend the rest of the evening in mine.”

That line was usually a winner. Steve expected that Bucky would close the distance between them, pull him in for another kiss, perhaps tug him towards the couch so that they could get lost in each other’s warmth. 

Instead, Bucky pulled his hand away, leaving Steve’s hand cold and alone on the balcony railing. 

“We really should get going. I’m sure the Senators want to see Captain America’s elusive private citizen husband for the first time tonight.“ Bucky smiled tightly, his hands hanging stiffly at his sides. “I wouldn’t make a good first impression on your colleagues if you were late because of me, after all.”

Steve blinked, still recovering from the sudden distance Bucky had just put between them. “Buck, is something--”

Bucky pressed a firm hand to Steve’s back without meeting his eyes. “C’mon. Let’s go see which vintage two-piece suit the closet will pick out for you this time, eh?”

* * *

When their private hovermobile docked outside of Tower Aegis, Steve and Bucky were immediately accosted by a swarm of camera-droids jostling for a coveted shot of Captain America and his husband. Several camera shutter noises clicked before the box-bodied security androids swooped in and firmly pushed the camera-droids away to the designated press areas flanking the vehicle dock. 

The scene was disconcertingly similar to the swarms of journalists who had followed on Steve and Bucky’s tail for years after Bucky’s acquittal, although the journalists back then hadn’t been so silent nor easily corralled. 

“Look at that,” Bucky said, elbowing Steve in the side with a wry smile. “I’ve become eye candy in the future. Out of all the things your Ma expected I’d become, I don’t think she expected the ruggedly handsome yet elusive partner of a national symbol.”

“My Ma probably would’ve fainted if she suddenly rose from the dead and saw a place like this,” Steve pointed out. 

Bucky grunted. “Can’t really argue with that.” 

Several security androids flanked Steve and Bucky as they walked across the vehicle dock through the discrete VIP door leading into Tower Aegis’s main lobby. The interlocking plates of the door unwound and, with a blast of warm air, the high ceilings and blinding lights of Tower Aegis surrounded them.

Steve, well-acquainted with the layout of the lobby after countless galas and Senate Council meetings, led the way towards the elevator pods surrounding Tower Aegis’s central core. Bucky trailed just slightly behind, fingers loosely wrapped around Steve’s. He didn’t say anything, but Steve knew what he was thinking. 

Decades ago when Steve had first introduced Bucky to the Aegis Project, Bucky had fawned over the cutting-edge technology laced within every square inch of Tower Aegis’s sleek hull.  
  
Even now, when Bucky didn’t think Steve was looking at him, he excitedly glanced around as if he was a kid in a candy store. Steve didn’t have quite the same wonderment as Bucky did for technology, mostly appreciating new inventions for their practicality and little else, but he could still understand Bucky’s not-so-subtle admiration of Tower Aegis’s inner workings. 

Above them, a dizzying array of rooms spiralled around the heart of Tower Aegis within the hull and the central core. Each room within the central core of the tower glowed faintly with its own light, weaving a tapestry of glowing cubes as far as the eye could see. Transparent elevator pods levitating along electromagnetic tracks transported passengers and androids alike between individual rooms and floors.  
  
Over the years, what once were barracks and greenhouses had been converted into recreation centers and offices for the countless civic workers who now resided day and night inside of Aegis’s hull. On a normal day, most of the people within Tower Aegis would be dressed in drab government uniforms while briskly making their way to their next meeting or engagement. 

However, tonight Tower Aegis was wholly dedicated to the Independence Day festivities. Most of the people bustling about Tower Aegis had little discernible purpose beyond gathering in groups around cocktail tables stacked high with delicacies grown in what little arable outdoors farmland Neo Columbia had managed to develop in the past few decades. Music videos and entertainment broadcasts flashed across screens attached to most visible surfaces in a cacophony of light and motion. Fashions popular with the upper-class abounded, fiber-optic lights, thin plates, and recycled pre-Migration plastics glinting in the harsh light illuminating the lobby area. 

On the way to the elevator pod dock surrounding Tower Aegis’s central core, people turned their heads to stare and gape at the presence of a face in their midst that they’d only before seen on posters and broadcasts. A few people offered greetings and outstretched hands, which Steve graciously accepted with his best smile. The security androids provided a barrier of pronged arms separating Steve and Bucky from the rowdier guests, though most people were too energized by the festivities to spend more than a brief moment looking at Steve and the somewhat familiar-looking man whose hand Steve was holding.

An android clanked past Steve and Bucky, a plate of hors d’oeuvres placed delicately in its grasp. Though the android was dressed smartly in a cocktail suit, the heavy armor of its shoulder pauldrons and tank-tread feet indicated that it had once functioned for another purpose entirely. Behind Steve, Bucky plucked a hummus cracker off of the android’s hors d'oeuvre plate and popped it into his mouth. 

The crowd surrounding the ground-floor elevator pod dock was noticeably sparser than the crowd gathered in the ground-floor lobby, as many of the festivities taking place on the upper floors were privately reserved for select groups of people. But the real Neo Columbian Independence Day gala, where Steve and Bucky were headed, would take place on the hundredth floor of Tower Aegis. 

Steve keyed the room code into the hologram interface of the nearest vacant elevator pod. A fine laser scanned his retina, then slid over his shoulders and down his arms to check his biometric signature. After a moment, a light inside the pod flashed green, and the clear doors slid open. The security androids, their job done, rolled away to escort another set of guests.

“Welcome to Tower Aegis and happy Independence Day, good sirs,” the elevator pod’s installed A.I. chirped in a neutral tone as the elevator pod began its ascent towards the hundredth floor along an electromagnetic track. “This pod will comfortably transport you to the hundredth floor within two minutes and then you can be on your way to the festivities.” 

Bucky tapped his finger against the curved edge of the elevator pod as brightly lit floor after brightly lit floor slid by. “Bargain-bin JARVIS here almost makes me feel like I’m back in Avengers Tower again. Feels kinda nostalgic.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know of an android or A.I. named Bargain Bin JARVIS in my database, sir,” the elevator pod replied. “Would you like to search Neo Columbia’s residency data for any person by the name of Bargain Bin JARVIS?”

“The _elevator_ can do that?” Bucky said, narrowing his eyes. 

“With no offense intended, sirs, you’re both several decades behind the times. I can do much more if you install the newest neural implant model today,” the elevator pod replied. “Discounts offered for government personnel and their legal spouses.”

Steve grit his teeth. He’d already heard enough of this in the past. “Which Senator put you up to this?”

The elevator pod didn’t respond. Bucky's flesh hand tightened around Steve’s.

Steve took a deep breath. He hadn’t really expected an answer. “Play us some music from the top trending chart instead, please.”

“If that is what you prefer. Have a nice remainder of your trip.”

A light at the top of the elevator pod blinked on to indicate that the A.I. was on standby. The pod’s curved walls began to vibrate with a song that sounded like it was made and sung with burned spacecraft wreckage.

Steve slid his thumb apologetically over Bucky’s palm. “Sorry about that. I won’t let anyone else get on our backs about the neural implants tonight. Sound alright?”

Bucky’s shoulders dropped, even as he grimaced at the harsh noises of the day’s trending tunes. “Well, it doesn’t seem like the elevator music has improved much since the last time I was here. Maybe you could ask someone really important to get that fixed, say that you’re making a request on behalf of The Captain’s spouse or something official-sounding like that.”

Steve chuckled, and then they slipped into comfortable silence again. 

The elevator pod changed tracks around the seventieth floor, moving at a slightly increased speed now that they were in the upper levels reserved for the Neo Columbian government. Lights glinted off the smooth curves of nearby elevator pods in bright stripes.

As the elevator pod rose past the eighty-fifth floor, Steve could now see the dark underside of Lilith’s Serpent looming far above. Lilith’s Serpent was a boundary around the two hundredth floor of Tower Aegis. This boundary divided the residential and common-use rooms of Tower Aegis from the cargo elevators connecting to the low-orbit spacecraft dock at Tower Aegis’s zenith in the stratosphere. 

Once the elevator pod reached the hundredth floor, it connected to a track that pulled it horizontally towards a circular dock wrapping around Tower Aegis’s central core. The elevator pod then smoothly slid to a halt at the edge of the dock, and the doors silently folded open. 

With the opening of the doors, Steve could now hear music and chatter drifting from the brightly lit hall leading into the depths of the core to the event room within. Guests dressed in sumptuous thin fabrics and recycled plastics streamed to and from the hall, arms linked and drink glasses raised. Across from the elevator pod Steve and Bucky had just emerged from, a feminine android dressed in a silky gown and stilted high heels approached, posture relaxed as it scanned their faces from afar.

“Attendee: Steven Grant Rogers,” the android said. “Special guest: James Buchanan Barnes. Approved. You may proceed to the Neo Columbia Independence Day gala. Have an enjoyable evening.”

“Thank you,” Steve said, even though the android wasn’t programmed to respond. 

The hall leading to the event room, though brightly lit with crystals hovering midair, was a sparsely decorated prelude to the main event. The gala itself glittered with the glints of clinking champagne glasses and the glow of the chandeliers suspended high above within the high-ceilinged event room. Evening tables flush with food and drinks lined the walls, leaving enough room in the center for dancing and small talk. An android band seated next to the stage at the far side of the room played sweet, tranquil lounge music as an accompaniment to the chatter in the air. 

Even though the decor at Independence Day galas imitated vintage twenty-first century glamour with soft tablecloths and real glass, the attendees wore the high-collared frills and thinly plated recycled plastic customary of a later century. Fiber optics woven into garments lit up with bright lights in all hues and colors, giving each guest their own distinctive glow. Steve and Bucky stood out in their relatively simple, modest suits made of genuine vintage material. 

Steve caught a glimpse of his reflection in a sculpture made out of mirrors welded together -- a limited-time art installation in the event room, according to the hologram placard hovering next to it. His body’s reflection was fractured in the sculpture’s surface, spread out across disjointed reflective planes, but a mirror chunk at eye level provided an unbroken view of his face. 

Suddenly self-conscious, he ran a hand through his slicked-back hair. If he smoothed out a few of the wrinkles around his temples and shaved his beard, he’d look like he was attending one of Tony’s fundraising events back in the twenty-first century. 

This early in the evening, the Senators -- Neo Columbia’s democratic elected representatives -- were mostly congregated around the event room’s center to exchange pleasantries over drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Senators were easily distinguished from other guests by their long capes and hologram sashes, refined scrap metal scaffolding wrapping around their bodies in slender and yet angular geometric shapes constituting evening wear. The scrap metal used for their evening robes was, of course, extracted from only the finest pre-twenty-third century ruins and machinery found out in the wastelands. 

Another distinguishing feature of the Senators was their augmentations. While nearly every citizen in Neo Columbia had some form of bionic augmentation installed in their body, making unaugmented humans like Steve oddities in modern society, Senators could afford high-quality full-body augmentations that turned their flesh-and-blood bodies almost completely into works of art. Scrap metal augmentations that had once reinforced human bodies against harsh environments on Earth were now status symbols reserved for the powerful elite.

As soon as Steve and Bucky stepped through the hologram door separating the main hall from the event room, several Senators peeled away from the main contingent to approach them. 

This coalition of Senators represented several of the white-collar business districts within the middle ring of Neo Columbia’s outwardly spiralling city map. They generally sided with Steve’s policies and acted as if they were his best friends, but only whenever doing so suited them and their goals. Steve supposed that having fairweather allies was better than having no allies at all in politics, though he still didn’t exactly enjoy the cozying up and faux pleasantries that came with the job. 

If there were any times Steve still longed for his days as an Avenger, they were when he was attending events like this one where he didn’t truly know anything about anyone he worked with. 

“Why, if it isn’t our favorite special advisor!” Senator Aku said with a smile so wide that it nearly split her face in half. “And if it isn’t his husband! You’re a difficult man to find around here, Sergeant.” 

“Sorry about that, Senator,” Bucky said, readjusting his fingers around Steve’s. “Gotta have one of us hold down the fort, you know. Steve here probably does enough for this city for the two of us.”

“Yes, yes,” Senator Aku agreed. “He is quite forward and determined at Senate Council meetings, to say the least. When the Captain rises from his seat, we all know we’re in for an earful and about five more hours of deliberations. We all think he knows the law a little bit _too_ well. I do suppose that that’s befitting of the old star-spangled shield leading Neo Columbia into the future, though!”

Senator Aku broke down into laughter at her own joke, if it could even be called a joke. The other Senators standing across from Steve and Bucky laughed with her. Steve smiled good-naturedly and let out a chuckle, though Bucky seemed more bemused than amused. 

“Senators, you already know who Bucky is.” Steve gestured from Bucky to the Senators. “Bucky, meet Senator Aku, Senator Yela, and Senator Rowan. They’ve worked with me on quite a few projects for bettering Neo Columbia.”

“I’m delighted to meet you three,” Bucky said, flashing a smile. “Happy Independence Day, Senators.”

“Happy Independence Day to you too, Sergeant!” the Senators replied in tandem.

“Oh, but what a shame it is that you’re not giving a speech this year, Captain!” Senator Yela tutted, turning to Steve. Steve couldn’t tell if she was actually disappointed, as extensive facial implants concealed her eyes and mouth. “Your husband is a charmer of a man, though. I’m sure he’s worth giving up your allotted speaking time so that you can spend more time with him.”

Senator Aku gave Steve an unreadable look, the smile gone from her face. “Is that the real reason you took a decreased role in this year’s festivities, Captain?” 

Bucky raised his arms in the air, letting go of Steve’s hand in the process. The sleek dark plates of his vibranium arm caught the event room’s bright lights on their surfaces. “Don’t look at him, look at me. I’m the real culprit here. I told Steve a while ago that I wanted to see for myself one of the galas he gets himself nice and dressed up for. Well, he decided that not only would he get me an invitation, he’d go the whole nine yards for me!”

The Senators nodded along at that explanation, seeming amused by Bucky’s revelation about his love life with the Captain. When Bucky let his arms back down, Senator Rowan’s eyes followed with.

“Wow! What a splendid piece of machinery,” Senator Rowan said, pointing at Bucky’s vibranium arm. “Make?”

“Shuri, vibranium, twenty-first century Wakandan,” Bucky replied, shooting Steve a meaningful sideways look. 

“Thank you very much, Senator Rowan,” Steve said, offering out his hand. “If you don’t mind, we’ll be on our way.”

“Oh, a handshake!” Senator Rowan chuckled, jowls shaking like a plate of wheat jelly. “Why, how old-fashioned of you, Captain! Always such a gentleman.”

Senator Rowan’s grip was firm, though the plates of his hands almost caught on Steve’s silk glove. Steve pulled away after a second and offered a more customary salute, Bucky following suit. 

As soon as Steve and Bucky had walked a few steps away from the coalition of Senators, Bucky’s posture visibly stiffened, tension finally bubbling to the surface now that it was just Steve looking at him.

“Hey. Sorry about that.” Steve grazed his fingers along the inside of Bucky’s sleeve. “Do you need me to do anything for you?”

Bucky shook his head. “No. This is an important night for you, Steve. I’ll be fine.”

Steve furrowed his eyebrows together. He knew Bucky was deflecting, but he wasn’t about to push too much. “If you say so. Remember, just give me the signal and I’ll drop everything for you, no questions asked.”

Bucky looked as if he wanted to say something, but then another group of Senators approached Steve for a round of greetings. When Steve looked back at Bucky to introduce him to the next group of Senators, Bucky’s pensive expression had smoothed over into a friendly smirk that charmed men and women alike.

As Steve and Bucky wove their way across the event room floor, Senator after Senator approached Steve with glasses of synthetic alcohol in hand and the occasional partner or spouse on their arm. 

Though most of the Senators were outwardly professional, exchanging pleasantries with Steve and then politely listening to him talk about a proposal he was preparing for the next Senate Council meeting, a few were outwardly cold and dismissive as soon as the conversation shifted away from introductions and discussions of the festivities to heavier matters such as budget allocations. Steve politely ended conversations and moved on as soon as a lost cause became apparent.

Others were overly friendly in their drunken stupors, treating Steve like another drinking buddy, even though Steve rarely spoke to Senators outside of their brief stints in office -- aside from a few rare instances of Senators ascending to higher posts in the Neo Columbian government. But the Senators who suddenly and randomly poured their hearts out to Steve were all washed-up freshmen with few ambitions and even fewer inhibitions.

“Sometimes I regret running for office, y’know,” one Senator said, swirling her synthetic wine around in a cylindrical glass. Even this early in the evening, her gaze was unfocused and distant, looking through Steve as if he was another hologram of celebratory fireworks. Her entire body except for her eyes and mouth was augmented with differing shades of scrap metal parts. “Nothing ever gets done at Council meetings. But these parties -- these parties, they’re a holler! No better drinks to be had on any other level of Tower Aegis.”

Steve smiled and nodded and thanked her for listening to his proposals, even if he doubted she’d actually done any listening. 

Once no more Senators seemed interested in Steve’s presence, Bucky scanned the nearby area for prying eyes and then leaned in to whisper into Steve’s ear. 

“There’s an awful lot of guests with full-body augmentations here tonight,” Bucky noted. “I thought the ban on harvesting scrap metal from pre-twenty-third century wreckage for half and full augmentations was supposed to be in effect until next year. I remember a certain someone saying that that ban would ensure that more scrap metal goes towards building infrastructure for the working class. His words, not mine.”

“I think many of them are older augmentations from before the moratorium, Buck,” Steve said. “And if they’re not, the military has the right to recycle old augmentations surrendered to the state. If you think something’s up, I can get an investigation opened up into it at the next Senate Council meeting.”

Bucky didn’t look too impressed with that answer, crossing his arms with his lips pursed. Before Steve could say more, though, the floating lights in the room dimmed. A hush descended over the gathered guests as all eyes turned towards the brightly lit stage.

After a moment of suspense, an android practically made from neon lights and acoustic voice amplifiers stepped up to the podium and spread its arms in a welcoming gesture. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the fiftieth Neo Columbian Independence Day gala! Please, seat yourselves for tonight’s programming featuring speeches from our finest thinkers and leaders.”

Steve and Bucky seated themselves together at a bench next to the drinks table. Around the event room, the other attendees congregated near the food-laden evening tables as well as the reception tables set up near the center of the room.

Several officials in succession stepped up to the podium on the stage to give rote speeches about the glorious history of Neo Columbia and the great accomplishments of the Aegis Project as a whole -- all words that Steve had heard many times before in one form or another. Next to him, Bucky flipped a dinner knife between his fingers underneath the table, expression impassive. 

Steve squeezed an apology into Bucky’s thigh. _Sorry about the boring speeches._

Bucky’s lips quirked up slightly at the corners, though he continued flipping the knife. _Don't worry about it._

After each speech, the crowd politely clapped and then fell into silence when the next speaker rose to the podium. At the arrival of one speaker in particular, however, the crowd instead rose for a standing ovation. That speaker was none other than President Salva herself.

President Salva, the image of grace and beauty as defined by twenty-third century Neo Columbia, ascended to the podium on the stage with long legs fitted with sleek nanocarbons. She was dressed in her resplendent presidential robes, the faux silk folds fluttering around her slender metal body. Her silvery plaited hair wrapped around a timelessly beautiful face made from the finest recycled noir plastics. When she spoke to the crowd through an oral amplifier, her velvety soft voice carried power and authority.

“Fifty years ago on this day, Tower Aegis was first planted into the earth by a team of pioneers who then rightfully declared the state of Neo Columbia independent from the Ymir Federation. Their singular aim was to create the greatest civilization ever to sprawl across the Earth’s bountiful surface. But the Earth that our founding pioneers landed on was a barren, lawless wasteland, not the glorious city of shining lights that we now stand above. Through sheer human innovation and determination, our predecessors continuously nurtured a seed of hope into a beacon of prosperity and progress for all of humanity. We are now gathered within the finest legacy of our founding pioneers and predecessors to honor and celebrate the longevity and strength of the most glorious city-state on Earth on this venerable day.” 

The crowd applauded as President Salva pointedly paused speaking. Bucky plucked a glass of synthetic alcohol off of the drinks table and silently took a gulp. The dinner knife now lay innocently on the table as if it hadn’t been threaded between Bucky’s fingers just a moment prior.

“For many years, this Tower Aegis provided a safe haven for our hard-working predecessors who tilled the land and laid the foundations for the beautiful city we all now call home. Without their sacrifices, there would be no Neo Columbia wrapping around the base of Tower Aegis. There would be no Independence Day gala, no private hovercraft, no synthetic alcohol resting in your hands right now.”

Laughter swept over the event room. Bucky took another drink, lips pressed red and flushed to the rim of the glass. Steve found his eyes straying to the amber drop snaking its way down Bucky’s throat.

“Just as the Aegis Project freed a selection of humanity from the Ymir Federation, humanity eventually freed itself from the confines of Tower Aegis as well, populating the city of lights we now call Neo Columbia in honor of those who came before. But make no mistake, independence does not lessen the importance of Tower Aegis and its history to Neo Columbia. To this day Tower Aegis remains the beating heart, the crowning jewel, the shining light of our great city. Because of Tower Aegis and everything it symbolizes, our citizens need only look up at the skies to remember that in Neo Columbia the future is coming and the future is now.”

More applause. Bucky looked to be halfway through his drink now. Steve’s own drink sat untouched on the table, reserved for the toast that was soon to come. 

“As we today look forward to a brighter future, we must remember that the legacy of our forebears is best remembered by reclaiming what was always rightfully ours. One day, Neo Columbia’s glorious walls will wrap around the entire North American continent. There will be a seed of hope, a beacon of light, a Tower Aegis to civilize each and every heathen left behind by the Migration.”

In the periphery of his vision, Steve could see Bucky’s expression harden for a split second, brows furrowing together before smoothing out again. To anyone else but Steve, the movement would’ve been imperceptible. 

An android bowed down to offer a glass of a brightly glowing drink to President Salva, which she gracefully took and held close to her chest. She then recited the words that Steve already knew by heart that had rested on the tongues of every Neo Columbian President since the city-state’s very founding.

“Together with our people united underneath one sky, we are the shield that safeguards humanity’s future.”

President Salva raised her glass in the air with a wide smile as applause rang from corner to corner of the event room. The liquid within the glass glowed with its own light, almost resembling a torch or a star within her grasp. “That is the meaning of Neo Columbia’s Independence Day. Let us now raise a toast to another fifty years of prosperity and progress.” 

_“To another fifty years of prosperity and progress,”_ the crowd repeated. Glasses were raised into the air and then tipped back for a drink in unison. President Salva took a long sip of her glowing drink before descending from the stage into a side passageway escorted by security androids.

The floating lights in the room brightened to announce the end of the night’s scheduled programming. A buzz of excited chatter quickly filled the room once more as Senators and other attendees rose from their seats to pick up more drinks and hors d’oeuvres. 

Bucky didn’t look so enthusiastic 

“You okay, Buck?” Steve murmured after a sip of his drink, touching Bucky’s shoulder. 

“I’m okay as I can be, pal,” Bucky replied, downing the last of his drink in a single gulp.

Steve frowned, but then he was pulled away at the elbow by a real estate land developer who was absolutely intent on getting Steve’s sponsorship for her newest reconnaissance spacecraft project.

By the time Steve made his way back to the drinks table, Bucky had already long disappeared into the throngs, nowhere to be seen. Steve opened and closed his hand in the air. 

He briefly considered going after Bucky before conceding that Bucky probably didn’t want to just be the handsome yet inoffensive husband on the Captain’s arm. If space and independence was what Bucky needed, then Steve could give him that, at least for a while.

For the rest of the evening, Steve would converse with as many Senators that would lend him an ear as possible, trying to win over as much support for much-needed reforms as possible while still maintaining a festive, friendly demeanor. 

As the night wore on longer and longer and the clock ticked closer and closer to the Independence Day fireworks at midnight, the Senators began gravitating towards the evening table towards the side of the event room, taking seats as food and drink poured endlessly into glasses and bowls. The crowd of dancers and idle conversationalists congregated in the middle of the event room grew thinner and thinner. 

Steve had only seen a flash of Bucky’s dark suit a few times during the evening, each glimpse briefer than the last. He’d been waiting for Bucky to come back to him before sitting down together with him for the evening meal. At this point, however, Steve would have to follow the Senators to the evening table if he wanted to get anything done for the rest of the night. 

As Steve made his way to the evening table, a familiar face rose from his seat to greet him. 

“Senator Azoth,” Steve said, offering a customary salute in greeting. Senator Azoth was one of Steve's staunchest allies on the Senate Council, recently backing several of Steve's bills proposing new initiatives to support social safety net measures for the working class who resided in the outskirts of Neo Columbia.

Senator Azoth’s carefully curled locks bounced on his shoulders as he sloppily returned Steve’s salute. Despite already smelling of alcohol this early in the evening, he was as warm and polite as ever.“Good to see you enjoying yourself, Captain. Where’s your handsome brooding husband gone off to?” 

"I've been looking for him, actually," Steve said. "I wanted to introduce him to more of my colleagues, but he disappeared into the crowd just after President Salva's speech. Have you happened to see him anywhere, Senator Azoth?" 

Senator Azoth grinned, light bouncing off of his pearly whites. “Hah! My wife never enjoyed functions like this one too much either. Don’t worry too much about your husband tonight, Captain. Join us at the evening table for some drinks already. We’re always absolutely honored to be graced with a presence as important as yours. Come, take a seat.”

Around the evening table, the Senators passed around plates heaped with lavish foods and nodded with feigned interest at the night's small talk. Several projectors in the center of the table displayed holograms of festive floral centerpieces and themed candles that flickered out of existence whenever a Senator reached through them to reach the nearest plate of cream pastries. 

Steve lowered himself onto a chair near the end of the table, the chair’s sleek frame ejecting pressurized air to form a cushion supporting his body. An android poured a glass of synthetic beer for him before rushing off to refill half-empty glasses around the table. He was wedged between two newbie Senators whose names he hadn't memorized yet. 

"It's a shame that we haven't made contact with Greater Humanity again in decades," one of the newbie Senators muttered. "We're stuck working with outdated technology from before the Migration. Really sucks that we don't have a nice pre-made planet to give us all the resources we need."

The other newbie Senator burped with inebriation. "Mmm… scrap metals. My dad made a killing off of selling old vibranium, y'know. Then he got caught, reformed himself, raised a family with his fortune instead of pissing it away at casinos, died a model citizen… You know the story." 

Senator Azoth leaned over the table with a conspiratorial look in his eyes. "Maybe we wouldn't have to deal with scrap metal barons like your late father if we expanded into the Appalachians. What do you think of that? We could shoot the damn rat infestation to death and take all their metals for a beautiful new fleet of spacecraft." 

The other Senators at the evening table murmured their assent, but Steve remained pointedly silent. The subject of the scrap metal mines in the distant edges of the wastelands had been a contentious issue at recent Council meetings, but Steve had never realized that animosity against the peaceful outsiders currently living in the mines ran so deep and cruel. 

Hearing Senator Azoth of all Senators voice a festering hatred that was apparently shared by a sizable chunk of the Senate Council didn’t sit right with Steve’s conscience, even if he usually overlooked insensitive comments at Council meetings in the interest of getting contentious proposals signed into law for the benefit of Neo Columbia’s people.

“That would be infringing on the law protecting the human rights of all of the settlers outside of Neo Columbia, which includes those who choose to live outside of our walls,” Steve pointed out. “If there are outsiders living near the Appalachian scrap metal mines, then we can’t expand into their land without offering them recourse first, according to Section H1AB of the New Constitution. We must first bring this to deliberations at the next meeting, Senators.”

“Deliberations, deliberations, deliberations,” Senator Azoth groaned, waving his hand in Steve’s direction. The warm eyes from before were replaced with a glare of disdain made clearer by the glint of inebriation. “It’s always ‘serving the common people’ this and ‘respecting the law’ that with you, Captain. You sound like a goddamn law textbook sometimes. Get a grip already. We’d get a lot more done if we’d all just do what’s necessary and damn all the rest.”

“That isn’t what we should do as Senators, gentlemen,” Steve said, trying his best to maintain his Captain face without descending into anger as he looked around the table. “We must first think of Neo Columbia’s citizens and what we can do for them. Our duty is to them first and foremost.”

“But is it?” another Senator said -- Senator Ray, Steve remembered his name was -- with only a brief glance in Steve’s direction. “What have the worker drones ever done for us, Captain? Shine our shoes?”

Drunken laughter and chuckles echoed around the table. Glasses clinked together in drunken toasts, and the conversation moved on. 

Steve, stunned into silence for the first time in years, tightened his fists under the table. After the moment had passed, he slowly loosened his fists and rose from his seat. "Apologies, Senators. I must get going. I need to know where my husband is." 

“What’s the matter, Captain?” Senator Azoth said with a foggy, confused expression, as if the alcohol had already made him forget his argument with Steve. “Leaving already?”

“C’mon, stay for some drinks with us, old man!” the newbie Senator on Steve’s right cried. “Loosen a few screws in that rusty head of yours already!”

Steve shook his head. “Sorry about that, kid. The Captain doesn’t drink alcohol.”

That was a blatant lie, but the Senators seemed to accept it enough to nod and turn towards more interesting conversations. Maybe the Senators were already too drunk to remember the dozens of times that Steve had downed a glass of synthetic alcohol in front of their eyes over the past few years. 

As Steve put some distance between himself and the evening table, he could feel eyes boring into his back. He didn’t turn around to look, already suspecting barely concealed expressions of disdain at the outdated old man who’d ruined their fun.

Instead of taking his glass of synthetic beer with him, Steve waved over a server android and then plucked a glass of water from the tray in its grasp. He slowed down as he took a sip of spring water and then scanned the exits for a hint of tied-up long brown hair, perhaps even a flicker of dark suit material. 

A plate of appetizers gathered for the few remaining dancers breezed past Steve, kelp fronds and greenhouse grapes delicately wrapped with lab-grown prosciutto resting on thin crackers. The android band transitioned to a slow, jazzy tune bringing to mind romantic nights of centuries past.

In the corner of the event room, a young woman tapped the inside of another woman’s elbow -- perhaps two daughters of the Senators, or maybe a high-ranking couple within government official ranks.

“The Skuld leisure craft will be docked at the top of Tower Aegis until the end of the week,” Steve heard one of them murmur. “Would you like to join me at the lights show tomorrow night?” 

Steve turned away, feeling a pang in his gut. He didn’t remember the last time he’d gone on an actual date with Bucky. These days, most of their date nights were cut short by Steve being called in for an impromptu meeting with the Senators or by Bucky excusing himself to attend to some urgent matter he’d forgotten about until that night. 

For a moment Steve wondered if Bucky had already left Tower Aegis and returned home, as Bucky sometimes took a hovertaxi home alone after tepid dates. Then he remembered that there was no way to descend alone from the hundredth floor to the bottom of Tower Aegis without high-level security clearance, which Bucky didn’t have. Now Steve wondered if Bucky had tried to hail an elevator pod before finding out that Steve had essentially trapped him on the floor. Steve briefly considered whether or not Bucky had taken an escape hatch and climbed one hundred stories down to the ground before reasoning that even Bucky wouldn’t be able to pull off such a feat without protection against the elements. 

No matter whether or not Bucky had found a way to leave, Steve had to go find him. 

Steve began walking along the perimeter of the event room, maintaining a pace that was just casual enough so as to avoid drawing attention. He scanned the crowd, watched the exits, but there was still no sign of dark hair tied up in a bun or a ruggedly handsome face with just the right amount of stubble. Wherever Bucky had gone off to, he wasn’t in the event room anymore.

Before Steve could make a full pass around the perimeter of the event room, another familiar face approached him.

“Captain,” Commander Kaeser rasped, mouth plates clicking together. “Happy Independence Day. You seem to be in a hurry.”

Commander Kaeser, augmented throughout every inch of his body, looked much like the army of soulless soldiers that he commanded. Armor plates were grafted to his featureless pale skin along vital points, his eyes replaced completely by a visor implanted in his skull. His limbs were dark metal prosthetics with blade-sharp edges designed for a weapon rather than a human.

Kaeser’s dress uniform, however, distinguished him from a regular foot soldier. The uniform was sleek, dark, and richly patterned, the fabric doubling as armor in a pinch. A pin of silver wings was neatly tucked into his lapel -- the symbol of Neo Columbia’s standing military force.

Additionally, Commander Kaeser was wholly alive and living, hence his high military rank -- though the truest distinction between Kaeser and his soldiers was his consciousness and selfhood. He spoke with an elegance and presence that was nearly unmatched among the mostly dull and lifeless Neo Columbian high brass.

“Happy Independence Day to you too, Commander,” Steve said with a salute. “Have you spoken to my husband tonight?”

"Your husband, Sergeant Barnes. I did speak with him earlier. He is quite a charming man." Kaeser's face plates clicked together. "It is a shame that he is still a private citizen under your protection. Perhaps he would serve us well within the ranks of the Neo-Columbian military."

"With all due respect, Commander Kaeser," Steve said with as much of a smile as he could manage when he was gritting his teeth. "That is not up for discussion this evening. He accepted my invitation to the gala this year on the condition that he would not be expected to serve any official role as a result of his attendance."

“Very well. Out of respect for your service, I will not infringe on your right for you both to live in the past. Have a wonderful rest of your evening, Captain.” Commander Kaeser bared his metal teeth at Steve in what was either a smile or a grimace before turning away and merging into the masses. 

Steve bit down a grimace. Commander Kaeser reminded him too much of old allies-turned-enemies for comfort. 

But Steve understood that the defectors and vigilantes of the wastelands posed a danger to Neo Columbia’s vital supply lines, and so men like Commander Kaeser and the soldiers they led were a necessary evil. That was what he had to tell himself so that he could hold himself back from punching Kaeser in the face at every Senate Council meeting, at least.

At least Bucky wouldn't have to deal with men like Kaeser as long as Steve remained in the public eye in exchange for Bucky's relative privacy. That was one of the unspoken stipulations in Steve’s contract with the Senate Council, although that likely wouldn’t stop the paparazzi androids from spreading pictures of Steve and Bucky hand-in-hand on Independence Day. 

Steve frowned. Speaking of Bucky, there was still no sign of him anywhere in the event hall. He moved towards the exit to probe the side halls for Bucky, but after taking just a few steps he almost ran right into President Salva. 

"Someone's in a rush on Independence Day," President Salva quipped with a bemused raise of her eyebrow. “Don’t you have any warm words for the President tonight before you attend to more serious matters apparently requiring your utmost attention, Captain?”

"My apologies for leaving so soon, Mrs. President," Steve said, reaching out a hand apologetically. "I’ve been looking for my husband. Good to see you tonight, however."

President Salva let out a laugh. “Oh, there is no need for formalities between colleagues, dear. Just call me by my title.”

“Sorry about that, President Salva,” Steve said. “I’m a little rusty on today’s customs, being who I am and all. Captain America, at your service.” 

If Steve had been starring in a Saturday special, canned laughter would’ve accompanied that line. Instead, President Salva let out a short chuckle and then schooled her face into neutrality once more. 

“Is there something you wish to say to me, Captain?” President Salva asked, crossing her hands over her legs. 

“I was just about to say that we’re overdue for an evaluation of our moratorium on scrap metal harvesting for full-body augmentations,” Steve said. “

“Full-body augmentations have existed long before the moratorium was enacted, Captain,” President Salva said with a sugary sweet voice. “Enacting the moratorium alone took months of deliberations and compromises between Senators across Neo Columbia. An evaluation would take months more of time that we don’t have.”

“I understand,” Steve said with a conciliatory tone, even though he knew he’d bring this up again at a Council meeting in front of a larger audience as soon as he could.

“I’m glad you do.” President Salva spread her lips in an expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “The Senate Council has more urgent matters to attend to than reviewing old legislation. Not only do we have more budget proposals for new territory expansions and low-orbit spaceships to discuss, we must also root out the traitors and saboteurs within our ranks who will undo everything Neo Columbia stands for.”

“Saboteurs?” Steve echoed, furrowing his eyebrows together. An inexplicable chill ran down his spine. “I wasn’t made aware of this.” 

“Indeed, saboteurs. Apparently Tower Aegis is not as airtight as we once thought.” President Salva said. “But that is a discussion best left for another time, Captain.”

Behind President Salva’s head, Steve could see a hologram of the clock ticking closer and closer to midnight in anticipation of the fireworks show. 

“I’m very honored to have spoken to you tonight, President Salva. Thank you for your service. ” Steve said with his poster boy smile. “But if I may ask…”

President Salva smiled thinly. “Yes, I understand. You may attend to your husband, Captain.”  
  


Steve gave President Salva a salute before turning to step through the hologram door to the main hall. Once again, he could feel eyes boring into his back as he left, though this time he wasn’t sure what expression President Salva was wearing on her face. 

At this hour, most of the gala attendees were still busy eating their meals, so Steve was mostly alone as he searched the side halls of the hundredth floor. 

Just as Steve rounded the corner of the hall leading to the observation deck, he heard voices. 

“...the mainframe is becoming increasingly difficult to penetrate. They’re preparing for extended conflict along the border.”

“Will it interfere with communications with Units Gamma and Epsilon?” 

Steve stopped in his tracks. That was Bucky’s voice.

Bucky had his back turned to him with two officials dressed in the dark uniform of Neo Columbia’s military standing opposite. The officials’ faces were concealed with plated masks similar to Kaeser’s, their identifying insignias and medals carefully taped over and concealed. 

If Steve could see them around the corner, Bucky should’ve already known that he was here -- and yet Bucky seemed either too focused or tense to turn around and notice. The officials didn’t seem to notice Steve either, the lights implanted in their face plates intensely focused on Bucky’s face.

Questions swam in Steve’s head. Were these Neo Columbian military officials Bucky’s new acquaintances that he’d met at the gala? But then, why were they speaking on the observation deck and not in the event room? And why had they concealed their identities like that if Bucky already knew them?

One of the officials, the one with long hair tumbling over their shoulders, responded. “That is not our only concern. The thread has grown tighter.”

Bucky’s posture was ramrod straight, shoulders squared. “Who was it this time?”

The other official shook their head. “They caught Crow.” 

Silence. Steve knew that Bucky’s fist was tightly clenched, even if the movement was imperceptible from a distance.

“The tides are changing. We do not know how much longer it will be until the threads finally snap and unravel,” the long-haired official said. “We will offer as much protection to our own as possible, but there is only so much we can do without unearthing our very roots.”

Steve didn’t understand what any of that meant, but Bucky seemed to understand, if his hunched shoulders were any indication.

“We must be off,” the other official cut in, the plates of their mask clicking together. “The night is young and wings will fly. We will track the situation as it develops. Enjoy your night.”

“Thank you for your loyalty,” Bucky replied, voice even. 

“Before we depart, Sergeant.” The long-haired official rasped, clenching Bucky’s shoulder in their clawed grip. “You shouldn’t let your affections interfere with your mission. Watch your back. Remember, there are eyes everywhere.”

The officials turned away and walked in the other direction towards a hall on the other end of the observation deck with feet that floated soundlessly above the floor. 

Steve made his presence known with heavy steps that echoed off the high walls of the observation deck. Bucky turned around -- and for a second, Steve saw a glimpse of the Winter Soldier in eyes drawn wide with fear.

“Buck.” Steve slowed to a stop a few paces away from Bucky, giving him space in case this wasn’t a good time. 

“Hey, pal,” Bucky said with a smile. No trace of nerves or suspicion anymore, just blinding whites fit for a poster. “You were looking for me?”

Bucky’s smile dropped when Steve let the obvious hang between them, his expression turning carefully blank. “You really didn’t have to. This is your night, Steve. Go enjoy it.”

Steve furrowed his eyebrows together, concerned. “Not if you don’t want to be here. I got an invitation for you because I wanted to spend more time with my husband. This night should be for you too, you know.”

Bucky didn’t respond, instead turning back to the curved floor-to-ceiling windows with a panoramic view of Neo Columbia. Steve joined him, leaning on the railing an arm’s length from Bucky. 

From a hundred stories up, Neo Columbia was just as beautiful as it was closer to the ground. Millions of lights from hovermobiles, holograms, and windows twinkled in between the curves and edges of Neo Columbia’s skyscrapers like constellations of stars dancing in the night. Steve could see why Bucky had escaped to the observation deck out of the many floors and rooms he could’ve found refuge in. 

“Did you need some fresh air?” Steve asked gently, sliding his hand towards Bucky along the railing. 

Bucky grunted noncommittally. He didn’t move away from Steve’s extended hand, but he did look back at Steve with a silent plea.

Steve placed his hand on the small of Bucky’s back, pulling him closer, low and comforting. “Then let’s get out of here. Together.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The city's secrets begin to unravel, and the midnight fireworks begin.

As the private hovermobile made a steady descent from Tower Aegis down towards the streets encircling its base, the city lights grew brighter and brighter until all that Steve could see outside the passenger windows were holograms and brightly lit windows all decorated in red, white, and blue for Neo Columbia’s fiftieth Independence Day. A silent broadcast on the entertainment screens lining the hovermobile’s interior showed the time: exactly one hour and one second away from midnight. They would have to head home soon to avoid getting caught up in air traffic as revelers gathered to watch the midnight fireworks.

Here on the ground-level streets of Neo Columbia, the storefronts and signs were noticeably older than in the upper sections of the city. The hovermobiles here had obviously withstood decades of usage, mismatched replacement parts and growling engines revealing each docked vehicle’s own life story. 

This was also one of the only areas of the city with outdoor trees and bushes, as the air was too cold and harsh at higher levels for outdoor recreation. While higher districts had entire forests and sprawling complexes contained within glass conservatories, down here public life bustled along open-air roads and walkways. The entertainment district was especially lively on an evening as significant as this one, pedestrians streaming in and out of brightly lit venues and stores looking for the experience or purchase that would define their own Independence Day.

The hovermobile came to a gradual stop at a public vehicle dock suspended several hundred feet above the pedestrian walkways below, mechanisms securely locking the hovermobile’s hull in place. A light blinked on the hovermobile’s side doors to indicate that Steve and Bucky could now exit safely. 

Before Steve and Bucky exited their private hovermobile onto the paved walkway, their Photostatic Veils flickered to life. Steve now wore the face of an unremarkable, slightly balding dark-haired man in his mid-thirties, while Bucky now looked like a slim-jawed younger man with a blue buzz-cut. 

While the police androids on patrol here could see past Photostatic Veils, the centuries-old tech was still effective against the naked eye after countless innovations made by generations of scientists after the twenty-first century. To complete their incognito looks, they’d both already changed out of their vintage formal suits into form-changing clothes that were currently displaying two of the more modern casual outfits programmed into their fibers. Pedestrians moved around Steve and Bucky without a second glance in their direction, too consumed by the excitement of the Independence Day festivities to spare another thought to what looked to be an ordinary couple out on a holiday date.

Having visited this entertainment district many times before, Steve and Bucky began walking along the winding walkways that looped over, through, and around the tightly clustered buildings. They could easily walk along these walkways for hours exploring everything that Neo Columbia’s nightlife could offer. If that was how Bucky wanted to spend the rest of the night, Steve was definitely on board. 

Most of the store windows they passed by were brightly lit with decals and moving holograms celebrating Independence Day. A few windows were dark with the reinforced protective drapes drawn, the store owners and employees likely at home early celebrating Independence Day with their families.

One of the store windows they passed by was filled with handheld as well as mountable hologram projectors. While the projector shop was dark and locked for the night, a single hologram projector in the window display was still running a Neo Columbian 24/7 news broadcast. On it, a reporter in full protective gear gestured at a smoking pile of rubble in what appeared to be the wastelands.

“...reporting live from the shores of the Chesapeake Sea,” the reporter said in a tinny voice filtered through the window pane. “Recently, reports from several offshore kelp farms have made light of possible outsider theft from Neo-Columbian supply chains.” 

Bucky’s eyes flickered to the broadcast, then back to Steve. Steve stopped walking so that he and Bucky could watch the rest of the broadcast. 

“According to our sources, the vagrants who held up a shipment of dried kelp packages were armed and highly dangerous,” the reporter continued. “The kelp packages they stole were en route to be synthesized into other edible material and were valued at around ten million NC dollars. The military has reportedly sent out border patrol agents to retrieve the stolen goods. Stay tuned to Channel NC 17 News for more updates.” 

The broadcast then shifted to virtual sports, which neither Steve nor Bucky really kept up with, and so they continued on their evening walk in sync. 

“I didn’t know that kelp was worth that much,” Bucky said after a few minutes. “Thought it was just a cheap material to make food out of so that more of Tower Aegis can be converted from greenhouses to ballrooms.”

"We've discussed a few situations like that at Senate Council meetings before," Steve noted. "I didn't realize that the vagrant problem was this bad, though. I guess the coalition of border district Senators really did have a reason to ask for more funding for the Neo Columbian Safe Borders agency at the last meeting." 

Bucky grunted. “As if they need more funding when the budget for fixing outdated plumbing systems is a running joke for ground level district residents.” 

Steve crossed his arms. “Look, I don’t think a larger Safe Borders agency is justified either. But the border district Senators are an important coalition in the Council whose support is necessary to get legislation written into law. We have to make some concessions to them to even maintain current funding for social safety net programs, much less discuss any new projects.”

“Maintaining funding for some half-assed government agencies isn’t enough, Steve. You should know that.” Bucky looked at Steve, his gaze piercing even though his eyes were currently dark brown instead of their usual icy blue-grey. “For all the lip service President Salva pays to the people of Neo Columbia, she doesn’t represent who they are, and neither do the Senators. You’re supposed to represent the hopes and dreams of humanity, Steve.” 

“President Salva and the Senators are democratically elected representatives of the people,” Steve said. Something inside of him wondered exactly when he’d become a pedantic. “I’m a glorified symbol who sits in on Senate Council meetings and advises the President on how to keep the city running. That’s all I can do to secure humanity’s future.”

Bucky stopped in his tracks. His hands were balled into fists under his sleeves. “I don’t know about you, Steve, but I don’t think you would’ve wanted yourself to become who you are now. I don’t remember you being a guy who ever settled for empty compromises instead of fighting as hard as he could for the little guy.”

Unsettling emotions twisted in Steve’s gut -- doubt, unease, other things that he couldn’t put a name to. He kept his arms folded even though he knew that there was little he could say to refute Bucky’s words. 

“This isn’t the twenty-first century anymore, Buck. I’m doing everything I can as I am now,” he said, his words ringing hollow even to himself. He clenched and unclenched his fists.

_What else is there left for me to do when I’m a hundred years past my prime? I’ve already failed the world once before. It’s my responsibility to make sure there’s always a stable future for humanity to look forward to, even if that means some sacrifice on my part._

Bucky looked like he had something to say to that. But then, he suddenly broke eye contact and glanced around the nearby crowd. His expression darkened, as if he’d just seen something that he didn’t like. Steve tried to follow Bucky’s line of sight, but he froze when Bucky locked eyes with him.

"Drop it, Steve," Bucky said. "I'm not fighting you tonight. Forget that we talked about this. How 'bout we go cross some items off of our grocery lists and treat ourselves to a nice dinner at home tonight?" 

Steve openly and closed his mouth soundlessly. Though he wanted to protest, something about Bucky’s overly cheerful tone seemed off, like there was something he wanted to say but couldn’t. Bucky hadn’t sounded like that ever since the Migration, when Steve had thought all of the barriers between them had finally crumbled after the end of the world. He’d follow along for now and figure out what was on his husband’s mind later.

“Alright,” Steve said. “Sounds like a plan to me, Buck.”

“Then let’s get a move on already, pal.” Bucky clapped Steve on the back. “I think Goodmart’s having a sale on plums this week.”

Along the way to the central shopping plaza, Bucky suddenly ducked into a thin passage between two buildings. Steve didn’t think that this side passageway led to Goodmart, but he followed Bucky regardless without question. 

After a few blocks of walking around trash heaps and rusting hovermobile junk parts, they were back on the main walkway again but at a completely different angle that would’ve been impossible to see from their original starting point. Bucky led him down passageway after passageway until Steve was wondering if they were being tailed, though he still didn’t say anything.

Somehow, the last dark passageway opened up onto the shopping plaza through a crack in between two buildings. Across the plaza stood the most common chain grocery store in Neo Columbia, Goodmart, marked by a hologram of a smiley face mascot waving its hand in front of the door in greeting. Although they’d both visited this specific Goodmart many times before, they’d never needed to take any side alleys to get there before. 

There wasn’t much time for Steve to question Bucky’s sudden caution, however, as the timer on the tallest building in the plaza showed that there was only twenty minutes left before midnight. If they wanted to return home before the midnight festivities and fireworks clogged the light rails and roads with traffic, they’d have to get moving.

On the inside, the Goodmart’s floating shelves were lined flush with every fresh ingredient and packaged food imaginable to man, shelf panels constantly folding and unfolding as new inventory steadily rolled onto the shelves from storage units installed inside the walls. 

A shopping cart floated alongside Steve and Bucky as they briskly walked up and down the aisles for groceries. They found the usuals first -- potatoes, plums, tomatoes, beans, fresh produce that hadn't changed too much for centuries thanks to careful genetic engineering maintaining their consistent taste and flavor. 

Next they grabbed a few bags of frozen lab-grown meats and a jug of artificial milk that nearly tasted like the real thing. Rumor had it that a new generation of milk-producing cows was being cultivated in the Ymir Federation that would eventually produce mass-market milk, but Steve hadn’t seen any plans to approve animal-grown animal products reach the Senate Council floor yet. 

There wasn’t anything else they needed besides basic groceries, so they headed to the checkout line. Along the way, Steve picked up a kelp-flavored cereal box with his face emblazoned on the packaging and placed it in the cart as a last-minute purchase. 

Bucky noted Steve's last-minute purchase with a raised eyebrow before a light blinked on their cart indicating that they were next in line. 

"How’s your Independence Day going?” the android cashier staffing the checkout area asked as it loaded Steve and Bucky's groceries into reusable bags. “You two going on a date anywhere tonight?”

"Just staying in," Steve replied. "Sometimes there's nothing more exciting in the world than spending an evening with the person you love while doing absolutely nothing."

The android laughed politely and then fell into silence as it dutifully loaded the rest of their groceries into the remaining empty bags. 

Steve thought it was an innocuous question, but he had felt Bucky stiffen next to him, the mechanical plates in his arm clicking and whirring almost inaudibly. To a regular bystander, Bucky still looked at ease, fingers tapping idly against his thigh and expression impassive. To Steve, however, the wound-up tension in Bucky’s shoulder and jaw were as clear as day. 

Reaching his hand out to Bucky’s shoulder to comfort him came as easily as breathing. _Is everything alright?_

To Steve’s surprise, Bucky discretely knocked his hand away with only a brief glance in his direction. 

“Not here,” Bucky murmured. 

Steve retracted his hand. He’d comforted Bucky many times before, but this was the first time in a long time that Bucky had rejected him. 

Dark unease settled in his gut. If Bucky was tense to the point of rejecting his help, something had to be wrong. But Steve couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, and with Bucky this reticent, he was completely in the dark.

"Thank you for shopping at Goodmart!" the android cashier said without missing a beat. "Have a great Independence Day!" 

"Thank you," Steve said with a smile, even though the android cashier wasn't programmed to respond further. 

"How's your Independence Day going?" the android cashier then asked the next people in line without skipping a beat. “Oh, really? Is that everything you want to purchase today?”

The hovermobile ride home was uncomfortably silent, the bags of unopened groceries resting between them like a barrier. Their Photostatic Veils now laid discarded on the seats and yet they made no eye contact. Steve watched the timer on the broadcast screen slowly tick down to midnight. Only five minutes left before the fireworks show commenced the passage into a new era for Neo Columbia. 

When they arrived home, Bucky wordlessly set the groceries on the counter and settled himself on the couch in the living room with a tired sigh. Though his expression was seemingly relaxed and neutral, his eyes were flickering between the windows and doors -- almost as if he was being watched.

Steve stepped forward, hand automatically outstretched again. “Hey, come on. Tell me now. What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’,” Bucky drawled. The tense huddle of his shoulders said otherwise. 

Steve’s hand fell to his side again. He could feel a chill running down his spine. 

In a flash of dull sensation, a near-forgotten memory bubbled to the surface -- the apartment in Bucharest. The tension and distance of that time had been little more than faded memories of a past lifetime up until now.

A slow jazz tune wafted through the air, carrying with it Chet Baker’s low, soothing voice. 

_Time after time_

_I tell myself that I’m_

_So lucky to be loving you..._

Steve crossed his arms. “If this is about the argument we had earlier…”

“It’s not,” Bucky bit out, uncharacteristically bitter. “It never was.”

“If it is,” Steve continued. “Then talk it out with me. I’m your husband. We can’t avoid talking to each other forever.” 

Bucky eyed Steve carefully. “I said that we should drop it. Remember that?”

“I do. We’re not dropping it again if it’s bothering you this much.” 

Bucky didn’t respond, his jaw tightening. 

_So lucky to be_

_The one you run to see_

_In the evening when the day is through_

“I’m putting the groceries away,” Steve said. “Once I’m done, we’re talking about whatever’s bothering you. Understood?” 

Steve waited with his arms still crossed. After a moment, Bucky nodded.

They fell into tense silence again. Steve didn't like that silence was quickly becoming the norm between them when tonight was supposed to be a festive night. He couldn’t let this stand for much longer.

For a minute, the only sounds Steve could hear were the clicking of bottles and rustling of fiber bags within the refrigerator unit. 

When Steve closed the refrigerator door, he paused by the entrance to the living room. Bucky was still sitting on the couch, still on alert for a threat Steve couldn’t identify. 

The clock suspended above the mantelpiece ticked down the last seconds to midnight one by one. Steve could hear heavy footsteps growing closer just outside the front door. 

_I only know what I know_

_The passing years will show_

_You’ve kept my love so young, so new..._

Chet Baker's voice suddenly fizzled out with a strange mechanical whine. The lights blinked out, and the apartment was plunged into dark silence.

The clock’s chime was drowned out by the crackling of fireworks.

Steve slowly approached Bucky. Bucky looked up at him, expression unreadable. The footsteps outside the door grew louder. 

Bucky’s eyes went wide. “Get down. Now.”

“Buck--”

The wall exploded. 

For a moment, Steve’s vision was filled with white -- _a flash bomb_. 

There was a deafening roar. Razor-edged shrapnel sliced across Steve’s head and shoulders. A heavy weight slammed into him from the front. He nearly collapsed backwards onto the floor. Everything was still white.

Then, he came back to himself, his breathing heavy. He could feel Bucky at his back, grip bruisingly tight. Bucky was silently pulling him into a hidden closet. The back of Steve’s shirt grew damp with blood. 

“Buck,” Steve gasped quietly, fingers shaking, still unsure of what had just happened. “Buck, I--”

Bucky clamped a hand over Steve’s mouth. After a moment, he could hear mechanical whirring, boots and machinery crunching through shattered glass just a few feet away.

“Steve,” Bucky hissed. His voice was nearly inaudible “There’s no time. We’re getting our weapons and get out of here. The dummy signals won’t distract them for long.”

Steve nodded numbly. He breathed in and out, in and out. He was on the battlefield now. 

A tense minute passed as the intruders swept down the living room, sometimes stopping outside of but never detecting the signal-proof hidden closet. The mechanical sounds in the living room finally faded away as footsteps receded in several directions at once. Bucky tapped Steve’s shoulder -- _go_.

Steve soundlessly stepped out of the hidden closet. The automatic lights in the kitchen sliced a bright line across the floor, glinting harshly off of the shattered glass now littering the empty living room. The intruders, whoever they were, had all already disappeared down the side hallways. 

The armory was hidden away down one of those hallways inside of a walk-in closet in case Steve and Bucky ever had to defend themselves from intruders while at home. 

When planning for a home invasion, however, neither of them had expected that they would be caught completely off guard and out in the open. Steve supposed that he’d grown complacent after decades of peace -- though he was sure Bucky still had a Plan B up his sleeve.

Bucky’s hand slipped from Steve’s face. Steve turned around, expecting Bucky to explain his Plan B --

\-- but instead he saw Bucky clutching at a growing bloodstain in his shirt.

“Shit,” Steve hissed, pressing his hand to Bucky’s torn shirt in an attempt to stem the bleeding. He could see Bucky’s chest heaving laboriously. Never in his worst nightmares could he have imagined ever seeing Bucky bleed out again--

“Steve. Steve, I’m okay,” Bucky rasped, gripping Steve’s wrist with blood-slick fingers and squeezing. “It’s nothing. I can still fight. I’ve taken worse. We have to keep moving.” 

Steve took a deep breath. Bucky was right. He could feel that the wound was superficial, although it was still bleeding far too much. What was more concerning was that the debris had torn Bucky’s shirt apart too much for the fibers to knit themselves into body armor, leaving him vulnerable to more serious injuries were he to end up against direct fire. That meant that Steve would have to shield the two of them. 

The streetwear rippled momentarily on Steve’s body, folding and then unfolding into the sleek yet functional body armor symbolizing Neo Columbia’s The Captain, a white star glinting on his chest amid black, red, and gold plates. Although he hadn’t worn his body armor in a long time, he’d never removed the setting from his clothing at Bucky’s insistence. He was grateful that he trusted Bucky’s judgement.

“Weapons first,” Bucky said, anticipating Steve’s next thought. “First aid kit second, if at all.”

Steve wanted to protest, but Bucky pressed his hand to Steve’s chest -- _wait_. 

Steve waited. In the silence, he could hear that some of the intruders were pacing back and forth near the armory, standing guard. While he and Bucky could easily take down a few mooks, there was no telling what weapons the intruders had or how many there even were. Without that knowledge, they could quickly find themselves outnumbered and outmatched.

“We’re approaching this strategically,” Bucky said. “Wait for the signal. We’ll see how many there are and then get as many of them as we can before we get out of here.”

Two beams extending diagonally across the room from the floor to the wall provided easy access up to the rafters crossing the high ceiling, which were both an architectural statement and a prime spot for camping. 

After a silent climb, Steve and Bucky laid in wait in the darkness on separate rafters extending from opposite sides of the living room, stock-still, breathing slowed. 

Heavy footsteps reverberated louder and louder down the hallway until they rang off of the living room walls. Steve craned his neck slightly for a better look.

The intruders were in dark body armor and fatigues, signaling that they were Neo Columbian soldiers. The soldiers’ heads consisted of skull plate implants and exposed tubes winding around pale flesh. Beady lights implanted in the face plates glowed orange and yellow in the darkness. Electric guns crackled faintly in their hands -- nothing that Steve and Bucky couldn’t handle bare-handed one-on-one, but something that could quickly become a problem if several were trained on them at once.

The soldiers emerged out of the shadows and into formation, fanning out around the perimeter of the room to cut off all routes of escape. Light glinted off of the steel wings of the Neo Columbian Internal Security Agency emblazoned on shoulder pauldrons and weapon handles. 

Steve knew there had to be a damn good reason for the NCISA to send armed soldiers and kick down the door of a national symbol. He also knew that he would know that very reason in just a few moments. By Neo Columbian law, a warrant had to be read in full before any arrests or captures could be made by the NCISA on domestic soil. 

At the head of the formation, the squadron leader -- distinguished by the gold stripes on its helmet -- stood in place, the other soldiers falling into formation around the room. The plates of the leader’s face clicked and glowed, signaling that it was about to speak. 

“James Buchanan Barnes,” the leader’s tinny voice rattled. “Registered Neo Columbian resident. Enhanced and augmented human. Husband of Captain America, Steven Grant Rogers. You are a Level Red threat to the security of Neo Columbia and her citizenry. Stand down now, and we will take you into custody. President Salva and the Senators will judge you at your trial.”

A homing laser point zig-zagged across the beams and up the wall. Steve could see Bucky coiling up on the opposite side of the room, ready to spring. 

“If you resist or remain silent, you will pose a threat to public safety. You will be summarily eliminated. Your remains will become Neo Columbian government property. These are the terms of your arrest warrant.”

Steve curled his hands into fists. He knew that fighting Neo Columbian soldiers would lead to his and Bucky’s expulsion from the city, but there was no recourse when the NCISA had designated _Bucky_ of all people as an enemy to the state. If the NCISA thought that they could arrest Bucky on false charges and not have Steve Rogers kick down every door and soldier in Neo Columbia to protect him, then they’d sorely miscalculated. 

A blinding flash filled one of the side hallways -- _the signal,_ Steve realized. A second later, a blast of pressure tore through the apartment with a boom, shaking every surface to the core. His ears popped, and his grip nearly slipped from the metal beam. 

Below the rafters, several soldiers collapsed bonelessly, the machinery installed within their artificial bodies malfunctioning. Electric guns clattered to the floor now dead and useless.

With his serum-enhanced hearing, Steve could hear heavy weights dropping to the floor several rooms away amid disoriented shouting. The remaining soldiers scattered in all directions around the apartment with the audible clanking of heavy armor to assist their fallen allies.

Residual shockwaves continued to pulse through the apartment walls. Across the living room, the framed photographic prints of Steve and his old friends fell to the ground and shattered into colorless shards. The medals that Steve had received for his civic service fizzled out into nothingness. 

A few disoriented soldiers still remained in the living room, pointing their guns haphazardly in every direction. Steve and Bucky dropped silently from the rafters in tandem, closing in like predators picking off easy prey. 

Steve longed to have his shield on his arm right now to take them all out at once, but his bare hands did the job just fine. 

At the sound of his footsteps, the soldier closest to Steve whipped around just in time for him to punch it in a weak point close to its collarbone and kick it to the floor. He wheeled around to grab another one around the neck and toss it into the wall, its body crunching under its own armor and then laying limp.   
  


Across the room, Bucky roundhouse-kicked a soldier’s torso hard enough that sparks flew from newly exposed circuitry. The lights embedded in the soldier’s face plates faded as it fell backwards into an end table and crumpled. 

The soldiers were cheap mass-productions if they all folded so easily to a single blow. Their weapons were low-grade, too, several decades outdated compared to recent advances in military tech. Steve wondered if the ISA had any files on his or Bucky’s combat history with how badly they’d underestimated the strength of two super-soldiers.

Now that the soldiers all laid neutralized around the room, Steve looked up and met Bucky’s eyes. 

“What was that signal?” Steve asked. “You had an EMP emitter installed in our apartment this whole time?”

“Bomb,” Bucky explained with a labored grimace. The bloodstain was still dark and visible on his torn shirt. “Been expecting visitors for a while. Didn’t want it to come to this, but there was no other way to get outta this situation without leaving a mess.” 

The emergency lights flickered on, flashing cool and bright in the darkness. Bucky’s face was cast in light, then shadow, then light again.

“Breach detected in structural integrity,” the voice of the building’s maintenance A.I. hummed through the walls. “All residents evacuate through the nearest unobstructed exits. Repeat, all residents evacuate through the nearest unobstructed exits.”

A soldier burst out from a side hallway armed with a manual bullet-firing gun, muzzle flashing. In one smooth motion, Bucky kicked the coffee table onto its side, blocking the oncoming fire, and then brought his vibranium arm down on the soldier’s helmet. The soldier crumpled to the floor, sparks flying from exposed wires. 

After bending over the soldier’s body and unfastening the weapons secured to its harness, Bucky now had a manual rifle in his hands and several grenades in his belt. He handed two of the grenades off to Steve and then silently led the way with the rifle raised in his arms. 

The hallway to the bedroom was eerily empty save for one or two soldiers crumpled on the floor, limp and unmoving. The flashing emergency lights flooded every surface with sterile light, then darkness, then sterile light again. 

The soldiers standing guard in front of the armory were slumped over next to the door, still stunned from the EMP blast. Bucky incapcitated them with well-directed blows to their exposed necks and shoved them both to the side before cautiously entering the armory with his rifle raised.

To Steve’s relief, Bucky waved the all clear sign just a moment later. That meant the security systems had done their job at keeping out anyone who wasn’t Steve or Bucky. 

Normally, Steve would take his time marveling at rows upon rows of functional weapons, ammunition, and supplies from every era Steve and Bucky had lived through stored in glowing floating containers and racks. There was no time for window shopping now. 

Steve reached for the newest model of railgun on the rack, but Bucky reached out a hand to stop him. 

“I wouldn’t take that if I were you,” Bucky said. “We’re only taking stuff that I know for sure don’t have any tracking devices in them. I cracked your body armor and your shield, so take those. Get some carbo-fuel from that shelf over there too.”

Steve nodded. He immediately moved to pile carbo-fuel canisters in his arms. 

“What else are we taking?” he asked as he emptied the entire shelf into his arms. 

“Rations, a water filter, a first-aid kit, another set of body armor, a helmet, some terrain-buster grenades, a few combat knives, and two manual rifles,” Bucky replied. There was now a sturdy knapsack in his hands that looked heavy and well-stocked. “That’s all we can take with us, so don’t get too excited for our little honeymoon.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Steve grunted. He dropped the carbo-fuel canisters into one of the knapsack’s open compartments. 

Bucky zipped the compartment closed and then slung the knapsack over his shoulder. If it weren’t for his bloodstained shirt and the harried look in his eyes, he would’ve looked as if he was preparing for a backpacking trip in the mountains. 

“We’re hitting the road as soon as I get suited up,” Bucky said. “Get yourself ready while I’m in the back room.”

“Got that covered,” Steve affirmed with a two-fingered salute. 

Satisfied with that answer, Bucky disappeared behind a rack of shotguns and pistols. Steve turned around to grab his shield from a nearby rack.

Steve had long ago given up his signature red-white-and-blue vibranium shield, but his penchant for shields remained constant over the centuries. Even now, he wouldn’t be Neo Columbia’s The Captain without his own period-appropriate shield. 

The shield’s core was made of a small disk with a star inscribed on the surface. The disk could either unfold into a physical shield made out of sturdy scrap vibranium or into a more modern hologram shield. His hologram shield had all of the properties and characteristics of his old star-spangled vibranium shield but additionally could change its shape and emit a harsh glow as a light source. 

Currently, the shield’s core was implanted inside of a wristwatch that floated within a pressurized air chamber for safekeeping. Steve reached through several layers of security holograms to take the watch out of the chamber and wrap it around his wrist. The watch was based off of one of Tony’s unfinished designs and had served Steve well during several of the conflicts leading up to the Migration. 

But Steve didn’t have time to reminisce on long-gone days. Just as he secured the wristwatch’s latch around his wrist, a heavy weight rammed him from behind, sending him crashing into a rack of Bucky’s vintage semi-automatics. 

Guns and ammunition clattered loudly to the floor. Steve momentarily struggled to inhale as a heavy hand pinned his head to the floor. 

He jolted at the sound of an electric gun inches away from his ear, jerking his body hard enough against his assailant that it stumbled backwards and off of him.

His assailant -- a half-functioning soldier with most of its face plates melted off -- lunged, but Steve side-stepped and pinned the soldier’s arms behind it. The soldier struggled for a moment, inner mechanisms whirring wildly before Steve shoved it face-first into an empty shelf. 

“Distress signal, Code 616,” a voice within the soldier’s head hummed as its compound helmet lights flashed red. Dark oil leaked from the grooves in its face plates. “Hostiles are armed and dangerous with intent to kill. All units zero in on current unit location. Activate emergency neuralink systems. Repeat, Code 616, all units zero in on current unit location. Activate emergency neuralink systems.”

Steve jabbed the soldier hard in the soft casing around its neck once, then twice. The soldier slumped forward, now dead weight. 

After shoving the soldier off to the side, Steve took a deep breath and flicked his arm. With a low hum, the shield flickered to life, pressing a familiar weight against his forearm. 

“Looks like we’re not getting off easy this time,” Bucky said from somewhere outside of Steve’s field of vision.

Steve looked up. Bucky stood at the other end of the rack with an expectant look in his eyes and his arms crossed. He’d swapped his bloodstained civvies with fatigues and body armor, though the wound in his side was still bothering him, judging by the slight limp in his stance. The mask secured around his face was made of interlocking plates with vents in them, almost like a muzzle. 

“That distress signal is gonna call in all the reinforcements stationed outside of the EMP’s area of effect,” Bucky said. “Let’s get moving before they get here.”

Steve nodded briskly. He let Bucky lead the way once more, but this time Steve had his back to Bucky’s so that his shield could protect them both.

Their escape options were limited now that reinforcements could arrive at any moment. Running back to the living room to jump off the balcony was now a non-option, as was escaping through the front door or one of the windows in the spare bedrooms. The one remaining viable exit from the apartment was the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows at the very end of the hallway overlooking several nearby buildings within safe jumping distance. 

Although the EMP had deactivated all of the electronics within the apartment along with the NCISA soldiers, the apartment’s emergency security system ran on a separate non-electric energy system. While it hadn’t stopped the NCISA from smashing in the front door, as Neo Columbian soldiers had the authority to bypass civilian security systems, it would at least let Steve and Bucky easily escape through any exit now that there was a breach in the apartment’s structural integrity. 

Steve and Bucky had almost reached the far wall when a shot dinged off of the floor dangerously close to Steve’s foot. His shield expanded into a riot shield just before a flurry of shots followed, bouncing off the shield’s surface and ricocheting in all directions.

Red-eyed soldier after red-eyed soldier flooded into the hallway with their guns trained on Steve and Bucky. 

With a yell, Bucky raised his rifle and began firing at the soldiers from behind the shield. Each of Bucky’s shots pierced through the soldiers’ face armor with a loud crack. Dark oil, pale flesh bits, and bright sparks flew through the air, but each fallen soldier was immediately replaced with another.

“There’s too goddamn many,” Bucky growled. “Looks like we’re resorting to the nuclear option.”

Steve knew what that meant. He took a step backwards, then another, ceding ground as his back drew closer and closer to the wall of windows at the end of the hallway. The soldiers followed, the flashes from their muzzles nearly blinding. 

“Now,” Bucky said. 

Steve tossed a stolen grenade towards the soldiers with his free hand. He maneuvered so that Bucky stood directly between him and the wall of windows just as a red-hot blast vaporized the soldiers with a deafening roar. 

A shockwave of pressure rolled through the hallway from the explosion, shattering the glass windows. Steve grit his teeth, maintaining his shield stance even as intense heat and pressure slammed into his body. Debris and sparks pelted the shield’s surface. 

Behind him, Bucky sniped at the remaining soldiers, felling several and sending the rest scrambling backwards. Now that all of the soldiers were dead or out of range, Steve twisted around and sliced through the hollow window pane with his shield. 

Through the falling debris and smoke, Steve and Bucky leaped from the apartment onto a nearby rooftop, barely touching the smooth surface before breaking into a run towards the street.

Just for a moment, Steve looked back at what remained of the home he and Bucky had shared for so long. They were leaving behind all the pictures and mementos they’d accumulated together over the years in case any of them had tracking devices implanted in them. There was now no going back to the safe, domestic life they had once led. 

But Steve had no time to mourn his losses. Civilians would undoubtedly be at risk if he and Bucky fought back against the NCISA in a residential area. In the streets and walkways beneath, he could hear confused shouts and screaming as chunks of debris fell from The Captain’s residence and smoke billowed in every direction. 

While Bucky continued leading the way, Steve kept his shield raised behind himself and Bucky to deflect any potential oncoming fire. To his relief, none came. 

Bucky swerved right, Steve following. They together dashed down an incline of glass windows, boots skidding over the smooth surface. Just before they reached the incline’s edge, they leaped across the narrow gap, landing lightly on the twentieth-floor entrance ramp to a nearby parking garage.

Steve kept his shield raised behind them, but still no fire came. Ahead of him, Bucky raised his rifle and scanned the garage for threats, then shook his head a moment later. 

From this vantage point, Steve could now see the deserted streets looming below, including the main road that Bucky had avoided. On the far side of the main road, there were several sleek black hovermobiles with the NCISA silver wings printed on the doors idling in mid-air. On the near side of the road, various civilian hovermobiles were docked with their drivers nowhere in sight, the open-air walkways now eerily devoid of pedestrians. 

Mercifully, the parking garage was also empty of potential casualties, populated by just a few hovercycles docked at their holding ports. On the other side of the garage, an unmarked black two-seater hovercycle was docked at a holding port registered underneath the name “Arnie Roth” written in floating letters. 

Bucky ran over to the unmarked hovercycle and punched a code into the holding port’s analog keypad. A moment later, the dock lowered the hovercycle close to the ground, inserted a micro-canister of liquid carbo-fuel, and started the ignition. The hovercycle purred to life, lights blinking within the four pressurized motors.

“I’ll drive. Take the shield and keep my six,” Steve said, pressing the wristwatch into Bucky’s hand before slinging a leg over the hovercycle’s front seat. Bucky nodded shortly, easily sliding into place leaning against Steve’s back. The hologram shield buzzed softly in the silent garage. 

Once Bucky had manually fastened himself to the rear seat with his rifle raised in his arms and the shield raised over his body, Steve finally leaned forward with his hands on the hovercycle’s handlebars. The hovercycle responded with a deep, powerful blast of forward pressure, gliding off the ramp and into the open air.

“The hovercycle’s cracked, right?” Steve shouted over the intense wind whipping at his face. 

“What do you take me for?” Bucky shouted back. “Of course it’s cracked! You think I’d trust the higher-ups with anything?”

Steve pursed his lips. Of course Bucky wouldn’t trust any source of authority, even if Steve once had. 

But he didn’t have time to think about that right now. At the intersection ahead, NCISA soldiers crouched atop a floating barricade of hovermobiles, rifles trained on Steve and Bucky. They would be within firing range in just a few seconds. 

“Up!” Bucky shouted. “Keep moving!”

Steve pulled on the handlebars and leaned upwards, ejecting a downward jet of pressure from the engines. The hovercycle rapidly climbed in attitude past balconies and walkways. The pressurized engines groaned with strain. The control pad flashed red. Still, the hovercycle ascended. 

Gunfire exploded beneath them. Several bullets dinged off the sides of the engines, but none hit their mark. 

Bucky returned fire with a guttural cry. Each shot rang in Steve’s ears over the roar of the engines. 

One shot hit its mark in an exposed engine. On the hovercycle’s rear view camera feed, the hovermobile barricade exploded into flames and plunged to the ground below in a tangle of burning wreckage. No more gunfire came.

Now unopposed, the hovercycle continued climbing at breakneck speed. They were now rising through the upper sections of Neo Columbia towards the rooftops in the distance. Behind glass windows, civilians gawked at the sight of a live firefight playing out before their eyes. The sight was unfamiliar to them, likely because of a ban on civilian possession of firearms within Neo Columbian residential areas. That was one of the laws Steve had advocated for himself to reduce armed conflicts in the streets.

But there was now no avoiding an armed conflict when the soldiers had shot first on an arrest warrant for an innocent man. In a situation like this, Steve and Bucky’s only option was escaping alive, with as little collateral damage as possible. 

As soon as the hovercycle cleared the rooftops, Steve pushed his weight down and leaned forward. The hovercycle shot forward like a bullet slicing through the air, engines growling with strain. 

With no obstacles or turns to anticipate at this altitude, the hovercycle continuously picked up speed until the wind threatened to tear the skin off of Steve’s face. Even then, he determinedly tightened his grip around the handlebars and kept pressing forward. 

The lights on the dark outer walls of Neo Columbia blinked faintly in the distance. At this breakneck velocity, the hovercycle would reach the walls within five minutes. 

Up here, the sounds of the city below were faint and muffled. A low mechanical hum from hovermobile engines penetrated the air, quickly growing louder and louder. Steve could feel Bucky reloading his rifle at his back. 

“Go faster!” Bucky shouted over the wind. “Don’t look back! No matter what happens, keep moving!”

Steve knew what that implied. There were more NCISA hovermobiles closing in on them. There was a chance that they didn’t have even five minutes of freedom left.

Five minutes was a long time. Steve and Bucky’s body armor might deflect imprecise shots and blunt force damage, but a lethal shot or a tumble all the way to the ground would spell the end. However, diving back between the buildings and putting civilians at risk was not an option. 

There was nowhere else to head but forward. 

A shot narrowly whistled by, then another, flashing in the darkness. A well-aimed return shot from Bucky sent one of the hovermobiles careening into the side of a building, exploding in a burst of flame and debris. The other hovermobiles swerved around the burning wreckage and continued their hot pursuit even as civilians screamed and emergency sirens blared.

“They’re still gaining on us!” Bucky shouted, reloading his rifle with another cartridge. His rifle barked rhythmically, but the rear view camera feed still showed a squadron of NCISA hovermobiles closing in on their tail just a few hundred feet below. 

Suddenly, a flash issued from an NCISA hovermobile’s aft cannons. A powerful shot smashed into a billboard ahead of them, sending flaming shrapnel flying in all directions. Steve cursed and pulled the hovercycle another several hundred feet up into the air to avoid a large chunk of debris.

The air was bitterly cold at this altitude, biting at Steve’s exposed face and quickly forming a thin icy film over his fingers. Steve didn’t know how much further up he could go this far away from the wall without damaging the hovercycle’s internal mechanisms. 

No. Steve wouldn’t give up. There had to be another way to reach the outer wall.

They were now fast approaching one of the largest highways running from Tower Aegis to the outer wall. The dull roar of a thousand hovermobile engines firing hundreds of feet below shook through Steve’s body like the thrum of the city’s beating heart. 

More cannon fire shot through the air, each shot flying closer than the last. Each exploded in the air with a burst of flames and shrapnel ahead of them, forcing him to swerve wildly around the blast zones. 

Suddenly, the NCISA hovermobile closest to Steve and Bucky disintegrated into a burst of flames from a cannon blast, nearly tipping the hovercycle forward from the pressure. Steve barely righted himself before he saw the next few moments play out on the rear view camera feed. 

The NCISA hovermobile at the rear of the formation turned its cannons towards another hovermobile and fired, sending its second target careening towards the highway below. Several soldiers armed with automatics burst from the top hatch of the now-rogue hovermobile and fired, piercing engines and windshields with well-aimed shots. 

The other NCISA hovermobiles wheeled around and shot at the rogue hovermobile with no hesitation. The rogue hovermobile listed to the side with a loud groan of groaning metal, now down to three working engines. The soldiers retreated backwards to safety through the top hatch. The rogue hovermobile suddenly launched forward, ramming into the remnants of the formation. The rogue hovermobile and its former allies tumbled downward. 

A tense moment followed. Then, the hovermobiles detonated one after the other, the blasts reverberating through the air just a few hundred feet above the highway. A thousand emergency alarms wailed at once. 

Bucky said nothing, though there was a glint of camaraderie in his eyes.

Steve wanted to do something, anything for the civilians in danger below, but there was no knowing if turning back and diving down would lead to the soldiers’ sacrifices being in vain. He silently thanked them and pushed on. 

The buildings in the outer districts of Neo Columbia towered over those in the inner districts, designed to contain Neo Columbia’s exponentially growing population for decades to come. Most of the buildings in the outer districts sat dark and empty, still awaiting new residents. Outside of the outer districts stretched a few miles of half-built construction sites, laying dormant and dimly lit. 

After winding past the construction sites, the streets abruptly cut off at the thick metal base of the wall. As the wall rapidly drew closer and closer, the bright lights illuminating the interlocking plates grew brighter and brighter. The outlines of the main channels through the wall became clearer and clearer, all of them locked shut. 

Steve’s stomach dropped. He hadn’t considered that the main tunnels would be closed on a national holiday because of insufficient on-duty guards -- or perhaps because a soon-to-be-ex-national symbol was headed this way. 

“There’s a service tunnel over there!” Bucky shouted. “Get me close to the maintenance ladder and I can pry it open!”

Steve pulled on the brakes. The engines groaned with strain beneath him, ejecting backwards pressure. “I don’t know if we can make it at this speed!”

“Then slow down somehow!” Bucky barked back. 

Steve gritted his teeth. The hovercycle hurtled towards the plated armor wall, engines whining. They would have to slow down the hard way. 

A moment before making contact, Steve jerked the handlebars upwards, grinding the fender of one of the pressurized motors against the wall. Sparks flew and metal screeched. The fender gouged a dent into the armor as the hovercycle gradually slowed and righted itself into an idle position just beneath the maintenance ladder.

Bucky launched himself from the hovercycle’s rear seat and grabbed the bottom rung with his vibranium hand in a single leap. Without pause, he scaled the ladder towards the security console. 

Upon reaching the console at the top, he drew his vibranium arm back. With a loud crack, his fist plunged into the wall. Something glinted between his knuckle plates. There was a data transfer device hidden in his arm. 

Light filled the seams in the wall. The wall’s plated armor folded into itself to reveal the entrance to a brightly lit tunnel just large enough for a hovertruck to pass through. 

As soon as Bucky climbed back down and slung his leg over the rear seat, Steve pushed the hovercycle forward through the tunnel. The entrance quickly closed behind them, eliminating the chance of pursuers following them out into the wastelands. Steve finally allowed himself to take a breath. 

After a minute of hearing nothing but the growl of the hovercycle’s engine and his and Bucky’s breathing while the tunnel’s harsh lights flashed by, the plated armor folded away from the other end of the tunnel ahead. The hovercycle sailed through without a hitch. 

Upon emerging, the harsh atmosphere of the wastelands hit Steve’s face with a blast of dry, gritty air. Endless desolate dunes and rocks stretched in all directions underneath a starry sky. The icy film coating his body almost instantly melted into dense condensation. 

Behind them, the doors of the service tunnel clicked shut. There was now truly no turning back. 

With the hovercycle humming steadily beneath his grip, Steve kept his eyes fixed steadily on the dark starry sky extending across the horizon, Bucky pressed firm against his back. 

Only once the walls of Neo Columbia faded from view and a cool breeze swept across the plains did Steve feel Bucky relax ever-so-slightly, rifle loosening in his grip, though he was obviously still on alert. The hologram shield on Steve's arm finally fizzled out and became a wristwatch again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The desert yields many secrets.

Steve and Bucky continued riding long into the night, stars twinkling bright above the lightless barren landscape. At some point, Bucky unfolded his mask into a full protective helmet covering his entire head, though Steve couldn’t remember exactly when.

When dawn broke above the horizon, Steve could feel lethargy creeping into his bones. He hadn’t stretched the limits of his body to this extent in decades. 

Still, he kept his hands secured on the hovercycle’s handlebars, keeping the speed gauge at the highest setting possible in these conditions without the pressurized motors overheating. The wastelands would offer little safety if they slowed down now while they were still deep in Tower Aegis’s shadow. 

Fortunately, Neo Columbia’s tracking systems drastically dropped in effectiveness outside of a fifty mile radius of the city walls, making communication with distant envoys and patrols almost impossible. For the past few years, the costs of upgrading and expanding Neo Columbia’s systems had been a hotly contested debate topic at Senate Council Meetings. As usual, little had come of the debates, which would’ve frustrated Steve if he wasn’t benefiting from that gridlock now. 

Even then, he knew he and Bucky wouldn’t truly be safe for another five hundred miles. There were guarded supply chains running through the wastelands in all directions along the current eastern seaboard, connecting offshore algae farms and underground greenhouses to the main city. The longer he and Bucky lingered in the region, the greater the risk they ran of running into an armored envoy. 

Steve grit his teeth. But then, what was left outside of Neo Columbia’s limited sphere of influence? Most of North America hadn’t been re-mapped yet. Granted, he and Bucky were far sturdier than the average human, but there was no telling what obstacles laid ahead outside of current human knowledge. 

And there was something else he needed to address.

“Bucky.”

Bucky tensed behind him.

“Why does Neo Columbia think you’re a security threat? You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Steve--”

“Because you haven’t. And I’ll knock down every single godforsaken door in Tower Aegis myself to prove it.”

“ _ Steve.  _ For fuck’s sake. Listen to me.”

Steve exhaled. “Okay, then. Explain yourself.”

“The higher-ups in the NCISA have a point,” Bucky said. “I am a threat to Neo Columbia’s security.”

“No, you aren’t--”

“I am. That’s why they sent a squad after me. I discovered their secrets and gathered a resistance force, so they can’t let me walk free. Can’t have The Captain’s beloved husband agitating a rebellion, now can they?” 

Steve grit his teeth. “Then why--”

“I’ll fill you in later, okay? We gotta make a stop soon to rest.”

Steve pursed his lips, uneasy with Bucky’s recent reticence, but he complied. He slowed the hovercycle down until he could make a full stop on a flat outcrop free of debris. 

When the engines stilled, Bucky dismounted and rifled through the knapsack on his back, folding his protective helmet back into a mask so that he could get a better look. He carefully scrutinized each and every object in the knapsack in the dim early morning light and then zipped the knapsack’s compartments closed again. There was a noticeable limp in his posture when he turned back to Steve.

“There’s only just enough rations in this knapsack to last one of us a week,” Bucky said, expression grim. “We’ll need to secure some more supplies soon.”

“We need to deal with your wound first,” Steve said, folding his arms over his chest. 

Bucky shook his head. “This isn’t the right time for that, Steve. We need supplies first. I can handle myself right now.”

“Bullshit,” Steve said. He saw images of dark blood blooming through Bucky’s torn shirt flash before his eyes. “This can’t wait. I’m not letting you run yourself into the ground.”

Bucky wet his lips, clearly sensing that Steve wasn’t letting this go without a fight. “There’s a safe house a hundred or so miles from here,” he said. “Abandoned nuclear bunker. That’s the only place in the area where dust won’t get into an open wound. According to my sources, it should be relatively secure, but we should still keep moving after we stock up on supplies just in case of an ambush.”

For several moments, Steve and Bucky glared at each other, neither budging. 

Then, Steve gave in a little. “Promise me that you’ll immediately tell me to stop if your wound gets worse before we arrive at the safe house.” 

Bucky remained silent for a few more moments, waiting to see if he could extract more confessions from Steve. When Steve didn’t offer anything else, he sighed and dropped his shoulders. “Promise.” 

While Bucky bent over the hovercycle’s control pad inputting the safe house’s coordinates, Steve looked out at the wastelands extending in all directions. 

The layer of grainy red sand blanketing the Virginia deserts was a product of one of the many disasters precipitating the Migration, as were the chunks of concrete rubble jutting out from the dunes in the guise of natural rock formations. Dry hot winds blew sand through the air and thick yellow clouds nearly obscured the sun from view. In almost every direction, Earth was nearly indistinguishable from a desolate alien planet. 

He turned around and looked back in the direction of Neo Columbia. Even from afar, Tower Aegis was still visible, looming over the armored walls and high-rise buildings that were now mere specks on the horizon. Tower Aegis itself was almost improbably tall, extending into the gloomy cloud cover like a pillar holding up the sky -- or, perhaps more fittingly, like an umbilical cord connecting modern human civilization to their forebears above. 

In the past, Tower Aegis had been a reminder that civilization could rebuild itself against all odds. Now, Steve looked back at the tower and felt nothing but deep unease in his gut. President Salva presided over the city in her office in one of the highest levels visible from the ground. No doubt one of the saboteurs she vehemently opposed was Bucky, his innocence notwithstanding. How much more time did they have left before she and the rest of the Neo Columbian government would send the full force of the military after them?

The sound of the hovercycle’s engines firing up brought Steve’s attention back to the present.

“We should get there within two hours,” Bucky said, dusting off his hands. “The map shows a sandstorm coming in due east. We’re not avoiding it entirely, but we’ll be underground before the worst of it rolls in.” 

Steve nodded wordlessly. He sat on the hovercycle’s front seat and leaned on the console as the engines idled. Just as he had in the tenements, barracks, and safe houses of yesteryear, he watched Bucky prepare for the next leg of the journey.

Harnesses and straps criss-crossed Bucky’s torso, a distinctive feature of his body armor through the years. He slung the knapsack over his shoulder and fastened his rifle to a carrying strap across his shoulders with well-oiled ease. With a single touch, the plated muzzle-like mask on his face unfolded into a full protective armored helmet wrapped around his head. The lights embedded in the face plates flickered to life.

Helmet now latched in place, Bucky mounted the hovercycle’s rear seat and buckled himself down. Now secure, he wordlessly handed the wristwatch back to Steve. The weight felt safe and familiar on Steve’s wrist. 

Finally, Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve from behind as if they were on a leisure drive through the city and not a desperate run for safety across the desolate plains. Warmth spread through Steve’s body where Bucky’s forearms and hands pressed against his waist.

The dark clouds on the horizon grew closer There was no time to spare. Steve leaned forward, kicked the hovercycle’s pressurized engines into full gear, and sped forward towards the sandstorm.

For a while, the hovercycle coasted easily over the sand. The only sounds were the rhythmic thrum of the hovercycle’s engines intermingled with the quiet whisper of the breeze over the sand. 

After an hour, the wind began to pick up, blowing sand into Steve’s face. He readjusted his grip around the handlebars and pushed forward. He couldn’t let the sandstorm catch up to them.

When he finally coughed, he could feel Bucky’s fingers tighten around his torso.

“Buck, I--”

“I know you’re about to say that you can handle it, Steve,” Bucky cut in. “You can’t. The serum won’t protect either of us from everything. We’re getting you a helmet from the first soldier we run into.”

Steve opened his mouth to argue and instantly ate a mouthful of coarse sand. He bent over and spat it out to the side, chest heaving. His throat felt dry and scratchy.

“You’re right,” he admitted. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. The words didn’t feel so strange on his tongue when he was speaking to Bucky.

Bucky grunted, likely because he still didn’t hear those words coming from Steve’s mouth often.

A moment later, the hovercycle crested a dune. There was a lone outpost resting behind a large chunk of rubble ahead, visibly understaffed and dilapidated after years of bureaucratic mismanagement, the outer walls reinforced with low-grade scrap metals. 

Steve pulled the hovercycle to a stop a few hundred yards from the front gate and flicked his hologram shield open, displaying his characteristic stars and stripes. A mass-production guard opened fire atop a watchtower, shots peppering the sand around the hovercycle. The gunfire ceased after a single well-aimed shot from Bucky. 

Inside the gates, two more mass-production border patrol agents put up a futile fight against Bucky’s marksmanship. Each went down with a hole in their neck, arms limp and legs twitching. Bucky disappeared into the outpost’s storehouse while Steve walked over to the soldiers.

One of the soldiers had a newer model of helmet affixed to its head. Steve knocked its helmet off with a solid kick to the temple. The helmet rolled away from the soldier’s head with the clicking of plates and valves loosening. 

Bleeding out and exposed to the elements, the soldier slumped bonelessly against the outer wall of the outpost. The soldier’s exposed head looked like a rotten potato battery, balding with only a few thin wisps of pale hair scattered between the cords plugged into the soldier’s skull and spinal cord. Without its helmet, it made no noise or struggle as it slumped against the concrete of the dilapidated outpost.

Even though Steve had seen diagrams and documents detailing how the corpses of both volunteers and executed criminals were reanimated for use by the military as tireless mass-production soldiers without any consciousness of their own, he still felt sick knowing that the soldier would die in a matter of hours without head protection or regenerative super serum. 

But in this case, it was either him or the soldier who would eventually succumb to the elements, and Steve knew that Bucky would kick his ass in the afterlife if he exchanged his life for someone else’s, no matter how justified the cause. Besides, while the soulless mass-production soldiers somewhat resembled the augmented high-ranking officers commanding them, they were little more than androids in both design and origin. 

Even then, he wished there were another way.

Steve picked the helmet up in his arms and brought it to Bucky, who was waiting for him with his arms crossed by the idling hovercycle with a pile of looted supplies resting around his feet. 

Upon receiving the soldier’s helmet, Bucky pulled yet another data transfer device out of the plates in his arm and stuck it into a port on the helmet’s base. From there, he worked his fingers through the mechanisms of the helmet, pulling out two bit-sized tracking devices and crushing them in his palm. 

“It’s cracked now,” Bucky said, handing the helmet back to Steve. “The inner mechanisms are now synced to your biometric signature. No guarantees on the smell, though.”

Steve pulled the helmet over his head. He wrinkled his nose. The inside of the helmet reeked of sweat and iron, the padding greasy against his nape. However, the filtered air inside the helmet was also distinctly cleaner, filling his lungs with air free of sand and grit.

_ User detected: Jack Monroe,  _ the helmet’s genderless voice intoned.  _ User approved. Initializing visual field. _

An unobstructed panoramic display of Steve’s surroundings lit up the inside of the helmet, almost as if he wasn’t wearing a helmet at all. He looked up at the similar helmet that was still wrapped around Bucky’s face, turning his head into a metal shell, lights and sensors implanted in its surface. 

Now, just like in Neo Columbia’s streets, neither he nor Bucky would be instantly recognizable to anyone save for those who recognized their distinctive body language. Currently, the only two people on Earth who knew the two of them that well were themselves.

Bucky now held a tattered scarf in his hands, likely taken from the soldiers’ barracks. He protectively wrapped the scarf around Steve’s shoulders, shielding the exposed strip of skin between his body armor and helmet. After tugging the scarf into place, he bent over and picked up several large pannier-style containers.

“There’s more rations inside,” Bucky explained. “Seems like they’re not expired yet. Should be good for a few more months.”

As Bucky fastened the panniers to the racks running along the hovercycle’s sides, Steve topped up the carbo-fuel tank and checked the gauges on the control panel for any worrisome signs. All clear. Before he could mount the hovercycle and kick-start the ignition again, however, he heard Bucky breathing heavily behind him.

Bucky was hunched over the back of the hovercycle, nearly slumped over from exhaustion. With a pang, Steve realized that Bucky had been pushing his limits to keep them both safe. He wound his arms around Bucky from the side and maneuvered them both so that their helmets were pressed together at their foreheads.

“Buck, we’re still here,” Steve said. He rubbed circles into Bucky’s lower back. “We’re still alive. It’ll all be okay in an hour. We’ll treat your wound, clean ourselves off, and get some sleep. That sounds good, right?”

After a moment, Bucky lightly nudged Steve away. Steve let his hands drop to his sides, satisfied that Bucky had at least initially accepted his touch.

“I cross-referenced the coordinates with the data I collected from the outpost’s computers,” Bucky said, voice measured. “The coordinates correspond to the remains of a small pre-Migration vacation home town. We’re headed in the right direction.”

An hour of cruising through harsh sand-filled winds eventually confirmed Bucky’s analysis. As soon as the hovercycle passed by several half-collapsed two-story buildings, a destination marker popped up on the hovercycle’s control pad indicating that the safe house was just ahead.

The only aboveground sign of the presence of a nuclear bunker was a locked mechanical doorway embedded in a rocky slope, half-buried under the sand. Steve pulled the motorcycle up to the doors and idled the engines while Bucky punched a code into the security pad next to the doorway. WIth a great groan of aged metal, the metal doors opened just wide enough for a hovercycle to slip through.

As soon as the hovercycle puttered through the entrance, its automatic headlights flickered on, revealing a dark shaft descending hundreds of feet underground. The metal doors closed behind them, narrowing a sliver of sodium orange sunlight illuminating the entrance into darkness. Steve pulled the handlebars down until the engines propelled the hovercycle downwards at a steady pace.

For a few minutes, the hovercycle descended through the armored shaft with only the two lone headlights illuminating the walls. Then, a bright square of light penetrated the darkness beneath. As they grew closer, Steve could see that the bottom of the shaft opened up into an underground garage. 

While the bunker itself was evidently built long before the advent of civilian hovermobiles as a primary mode of transportation, the garage was fortunately just large enough to contain a mid-size hovercycle. As there was no dock to latch the hovercycle to, Steve instead brought the hovercycle towards the floor as carefully as he could. 

Just before the hovercycle made contact with the concrete floor, thin supports extended from the hovercycle’s lower hull and planted themselves on the floor. The pressurized engines folded away from the ground up towards the hovercycle’s flanks. With a soft whirr, the engines stilled, the headlights blinked off, and the control pad went dark.

Steve leaned on the side of the hovercycle and took note of the surroundings while Bucky performed a sweep of the garage for trackers and traps. There was still a noticeable limp in Bucky’s gait, which Steve noted with a layer of guilt settling in his stomach. He wondered if he should’ve slowed the hovercycle to avoid jostling Bucky’s injuries further, knowing that Bucky wouldn’t vocalize his discomfort in an uncertain situation like this.

Abovehead, old fluorescent lights swung back and forth, apparently disturbed by the pressurized air expelled by the hovercycle’s engines. Exposed pipes and wiring snaked along the concrete walls and ceiling. Closer to ground level, several work tables that looked like they hadn’t been touched for many years had been pushed against the concrete walls. Underneath the work tables, vintage toolboxes and gas tanks had been stacked in neat columns and rows. The garage’s surfaces were oddly clean save for the dust and sand that Steve and Bucky had brought in with them, likely indicating that the bunker possessed some sort of automatic cleaning apparatus.

Across the garage, Bucky flashed the all-clear sign next to the elevator doors. Steve loped towards him. 

“Oxygen and radioactivity levels are all normal,” Bucky said just before Steve reached the elevator doors. “The heating and water tanks all look normal, judging by the levels indicated on the pipes over there. There’s also a couple of charging docks hooked up to the electricity generator in here for maintenance androids. The security system indicates that there aren’t any heat signatures on the floors below us, either. Looks like we found the equivalent of paradise out here in the wastelands.” 

Apparently sensing Steve’s presence, the elevator doors opened to reveal a sleek elevator pod made of glass and metal. The pod almost resembled a miniature spacecraft, a stark contrast to the garage’s rusted, aged appearance that Steve noted with a furrow of his eyebrows. But oddly modern appearance aside, the pod seemed to be in working order without any signs of tampering, so he didn’t think too much about it. 

As soon as Steve and Bucky stepped aboard, the pod’s doors slid closed behind them and the electromagnetic track pads lit up, guiding the pod downwards along an open-walled elevator shaft. The pod descended through several floors of dimly lit mechanical rooms before finally sliding past the ceiling of the bottom floor into a large open space. 

Whatever Steve had expected a vintage nuclear bunker’s living quarters to look like, it certainly wasn’t an underground imitation of a suburban house surrounded by acid green turf and walls painted bright sky blue. The pod descended towards a chimney on the house’s roof concealing the bottom end of the elevator shaft. The house itself was a perfectly average single-story house that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a twenty-first century real estate catalog were it not situated in a harshly lit underground bunker. A strange wave of nostalgia for a bygone era washed over Steve at that thought. 

The elevator pod docked at an electromagnetic platform embedded within a circular room. Frosted glass doors around the circumference of the room led into metal decontamination rooms that looked like they hadn’t seen any use in decades. Still, every surface was strangely dust-free and clean, most likely maintained by a cleaning android that resided somewhere within this house. 

“What is this place?” Steve wondered aloud, stepping out of the pod onto the tile floor. 

“I’m not sure myself,” Bucky said, folding his helmet back into his mask and then removing it. “My contacts said that it’s probably some rich old guy’s pre-Migration bunker. Whoever he was, he’s long gone by now.”

Steve unfastened his helmet as well, popping the folded mask off of his face and taking a deep breath. His eyes adjusted for a moment to the slightly different light of the artificial lights glowing above. The air inside the bunker was stale yet refreshingly cool and clear. The air filtration systems must have been pretty solid if they’d held up for decades on end, perhaps good enough to defend against a chemical attack if need be.

A distinct trail of dirt and dust followed Steve and Bucky’s footsteps as they stepped into separate decontamination rooms. Lights flashed on as soon as the frosted glass doors automatically closed behind them. 

Inside, robotic arms descended from the ceiling and sprayed Steve’s body down with quick-drying cleaning fluids, then misted him with antitoxin powder. More robotic arms with brushes on their tips worked their way into the grooves of his body armor. Strangely enough, the robotic arms looked as if they’d been recently upgraded with polished exteriors and well-oiled inner machinery. Was the decontamination room sentient enough to improve upon itself?

After a few minutes, the robotic arms retracted back into the ceiling. On the opposite side of the decontamination room, another door opened to reveal an ordinary-looking bathroom with a shower, toilet, and sink. 

Steve removed his body armor and combat boots and placed them alongside his face mask and wristwatch on a tray attached to the wall. The tray retracted into the wall for a second deep-cleaning of his garments. 

He then turned around and yanked on the shower handle. At first, the water from the showerhead emerged yellow and acrid-smelling. After running for a few seconds, the water ran clean and clear. 

Steve stepped into the shower then and let the water run over him. He took a deep breath as hot water stripped dirt and grime from his skin, dark sediment swirling down the drain at his feet. The next step was soap -- but was there any fresh soap in this bunker? 

Over the centuries, he’d needed to replace the expired soap in the bathroom every time he’d stayed in an abandoned safe house, given its relatively short shelf life. And seeing as the bunker was a pre-Migration design, its consumable items likely weren’t built for long-term longevity. His chances weren’t great, but he’d still give it a try. 

_ Here goes nothing, _ Steve thought. He grabbed one of the soap bottles off of the shower shelf and squirted its contents onto the wall, expecting the harsh chemical stench and slimy texture of long-expired soap. Instead, a fresh-smelling dollop of creamy soap squirted out.

He frowned. That didn’t seem right. He turned the soap bottle around to read its ingredients list. As he read, rivulets of hot water streamed down the soap bottle’s vintage non-recycled plastic shell. Strangely enough, the soap apparently contained several preservatives and additives that Steve recognized as advancements created by the Ymir Federation for the purpose of keeping resources usable for longer while in space. He’d learned many of these names years ago from Bucky’s idle talk about agricultural resource management in between cryo shifts. 

The roots of suspicion curled in Steve’s gut. Even if a team of cleaning androids maintained this pre-Migration bunker and replaced the soap bottles every so often, they shouldn’t have had access to soap bottles containing post-Migration technology, much less genuine non-recycled plastic packaging. 

But no matter how strange the fresh soap was, Steve did need a good wash after long hours spent in the wastelands. He’d relax now and discuss the implications with Bucky later. With a contented sigh, he squirted more of the fresh soap into his hands and massaged the fragrant suds into his body. 

He could’ve spent an entire hour standing there under the hot stream of water if the shower wasn’t set to turn off after five minutes to conserve water. Afterward, he emerged feeling as if he had just shed ten pounds of dirt. He toweled himself off with one of the plush towels on the rack and wrapped himself with another. After a mere day spent traversing the wastelands, a hot shower already felt like a precious luxury.

Steve paused next to the glass mirror in the bathroom. For the first time in a long while, he looked at himself in the mirror without makeup or a hologram glamor flattering his features. He looked years older than before, the wrinkles and bags around his eyes more pronounced in the bathroom’s harsh light. He ran a hand through his wet hair, noticing that it had already thinned out in the absence of the volumizing 2-in-1 branded shampoo that he usually used. A few imperfect streaks of grey peppered his gold. 

Even without a scarf wrapped around his neck or a helmet secured around his face, he looked barely recognizable as The Captain, vintage poster boy of Neo Columbia. He had no more purpose except to survive as best as he could out in the wastelands. He no longer owed anything to anyone, aside from owing Bucky his life -- but since when was that out of the ordinary? 

In a way, he’d shed more than just dirt and contaminants in that shower. 

A cloud of warm humid air followed Steve out of the bathroom into the open-plan living room, a far cry from the sleek minimalism of their apartment back in Neo Columbia. The homely yet cozy furnishings filled him with an intense sense of longing. A house like this could now only exist underground in a sterile, tightly controlled environment, no more authentic than the green turf lawn or the sun lamps installed in the ceiling.

Bucky was already dressed in old-looking yet clean lounge clothes, his hair undone and tumbling over his shoulders. His vibranium arm was freshly polished and glinting under the warm lamplight, though the muffled whirring of its self-cleaning mechanisms was still audible. He handed Steve a matching change of clothes -- briefs plus a tank top and sweatpants that were all branded with an unfamiliar business’s logo that was undoubtedly nearly a century out of date. 

“Got the first aid kit on you?” Steve asked after pulling the sweatpants drawstring taut. While Bucky could definitely dress his wound by himself, he evidently needed rest after pushing his body to its limits for an entire day without respite. 

Bucky nodded, gesturing at the non-recycled plastic tub resting on the coffee table in the center of the living room. He padded over to the couch facing the coffee table and pulled a face at a mysterious dark stain on the flower-print sofa cover. Nevertheless, he laid down in the embrace of overstuffed cushions, looking as if he’d finally discovered pure tranquility. 

Steve pulled Bucky’s tank top up to his chest and immediately winced. The dark, ugly shrapnel wound was only half-healed, dried blood crusted on the surrounding skin. While Bucky’s body hadn’t ejected the shrapnel by itself yet, the wound itself was mostly superficial and had no chance of infection. In fact, it should’ve nearly disappeared by now if Bucky hadn’t repeatedly agitated it over the course of the past twenty-four hours. 

Steve got to work, pausing only to readjust whenever Bucky’s face contorted in pain. When he finally finished cleaning and wrapping the wound, Bucky let out a sigh of relief. His face visibly relaxed as he drifted into a light doze right then and there. Steve pressed a light kiss to his cheek before heading to the kitchen for some food. 

There was a sink in the kitchen that gushed clean, cold filtered groundwater from the tap. Steve filled a jug with water, grabbed two drinking glasses, and set all three down on the coffee table. 

Next, he returned to the kitchen and foraged for food. He found that the fridge on the opposite side of the kitchen had been completely stocked at some point with canisters of vacuum-sealed dried food -- bland compared to the greenhouse-grown and lab-grown foods commonplace in Neo Columbia, but more nutritious and filling than eating nothing at all. For safety’s sake, he checked the labels for expiration dates, which turned out to be written in a date/time format he couldn’t read. 

Confounded, he instead looked at the ingredients lists and recognized several Ymir Federation preservatives that made food last for centuries without diminishing nutrition or flavor. He carefully peeled open one of the lids and was greeted by a juicy chunk of jellied fish. 

Now reassured of the food’s freshness, he gathered as many canisters into his arms as he could carry.He shuffled back to the living room with his payload, placed the food canisters on the coffee table, and then sat down on the couch opposite to Bucky. 

Once he was in a comfortable sitting position, he poured himself a glass of water and drank, letting the cold water wash over his parched throat. He then popped open the lid of a canister of mashed peas and ate in large gulps using the enclosed non-recycled plastic spork. 

After a moment, the scent of food wafted over to Bucky, who stirred just enough to sit up and pour himself his own glass of water. He gulped the water down, poured himself another glass, and gulped that one down too. Steve intently watched the bob of his Adam's apple with each gulp but didn’t comment, knowing that Bucky felt vulnerable whenever his guise of a well-oiled soldier slipped away. 

Bucky drained half the water jug before taking a single bite of food. He then cracked a canister of black beans open and dug in without so much as glancing up at Steve. 

Sensing that Bucky wasn’t in the mood for talking just yet, Steve set down his empty canister and picked up another, peeling it open to reveal a mixture of candied pecans and granola. For a few long minutes, they silently ate together, each setting down an empty food canister just as the other would start eating from a freshly opened one. 

When Steve finished his half of the food canisters, he still wasn’t full. He hadn’t felt this hungry since he first boarded the Ymir, when food was carefully rationed out and physical activity was strictly regulated, prompting an eventual change in his eating habits and metabolism. Even after he’d returned to Earth as part of the Aegis Project, he’d never felt the same all-consuming hunger he’d felt after becoming Captain America -- until now. 

He went back to the kitchen and brought back another armful of food canisters, anticipating that Bucky now felt the same hunger. His suspicions were confirmed when Bucky knocked over several food canisters in his bid for the canister of canned plums. 

They ate together for several more minutes before Steve finally hit his limit around the twentieth canister of food. Across from him, Bucky continued eating, paying him no mind in favor of scraping the last bits of canned peach syrup off the bottom of his twenty-first canister.

Steve’s fists curled and then uncurled on his lap. He couldn’t let this heavy silence go on for much longer. 

“We have to talk,” Steve finally began.

At that, Bucky’s eyes shot up to meet his own. 

“Well, we’re talking now,” he quipped. Despite his humorous tone, his expression was impassive. His eyes watched Steve carefully, barely blinking.

Steve cut to the chase. “So you were planning a rebellion against the Neo Columbian government. Why?” 

“You saw me speaking to the military officials.” Bucky’s words were matter-of-fact. There was no confirming or denying what was already obvious. “What did you hear?”

“Not enough for me to draw any conclusions from,” Steve said. “I’d rather hear you tell me about this rebellion you organized yourself.”

“I wasn’t the leader of the movement,” Bucky clarified. “Nobody was. It was a unified effort organized by various officials within the major branches of the Neo Columbian government opposing the current administration’s unchecked expansion into the wastelands. Rumor had it that some of these officials were in contact with other settlements outside of Neo Columbia, but I never verified those claims myself. I was tapped by one of your colleagues several years ago because of my background, and I willingly gave the movement my loyalty. I’ve performed spec ops operations for the movement several times ever since.”

_ Several years ago. _ Steve thought back to all the evenings he’d returned home late at night from a long day of work and found Bucky asleep on the couch. He’d assumed that Bucky had been waiting for him, thinking that the most strenuous activities Bucky underwent were the hours he put in at the gym. 

More questions rattled around in Steve’s head. He leaned forward and asked the first one on his mind. “Who else was involved?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky wet his lips. “I only knew the identities of my immediate contacts in the network. I don’t know who ratted me out, but that won’t matter no matter what happens next.”

Resignation never sounded good in Bucky’s voice. Steve got up, padded over to the other couch, and wrapped his arms around Bucky’s shoulders. While Bucky unconsciously leaned into his embrace, he continued staring ahead as if Steve hadn’t moved at all.

“Why won’t it matter?” Steve asked against Bucky’s temple.

Bucky laughed humorlessly. “They already caught on to me, so there’s no hope left for the rest of my immediate contacts. Without anyone advocating for their innocence, they’ll have several decades of hard labor in the scrap metal mines ahead of them at best.”

Steve wanted to object to that, but the words died in his throat before he could say anything. He bit his lip. Neither he nor Bucky had the power to save any of Neo Columbia’s citizens through judicial or legislative means anymore. And he knew just as well as anyone else that flouting an arrest warrant put them at a significant disadvantage if they recklessly charged back into Neo Columbia. Instead, they would likely face arrest and a harsh punishment with little hope for recourse for themselves or for their allies. There was nowhere left to go but forward.

“You’d still have a chance at returning to a semblance of our old life if you turn me in,” Bucky started. 

“Not an option,” Steve shot back.

The obvious went unsaid.  _ I’m not taking any chance of losing you.  _

“I knew you’d say that.” Bucky said, sounding like he was admitting defeat. 

“We still have other options,” Steve insisted. “You mentioned that the resistance movement maintained contact with human settlements outside of Neo Columbia. Do you know where these settlements are located?”

“No, I don’t.” Bucky wove his fingers together on his lap. “The Safe Borders agents within our network were the only ones who maintained contact with the outsiders. They were the first ones to go down when our activities were detected.” 

“But we know they’re out there. We’ll find those settlements ourselves and make a new life somewhere where nobody will recognize us.” 

“So you’re suggesting that we drive out of Neo Columbia’s sphere of influence, find the outsider settlements, and settle down somewhere new. That’s the plan?”

“That’s the plan,” Steve confirmed. 

“Think about it for a moment, Steve. What if we don’t find them? Then we’re on our own out here. There’s no knowing how long the serum will keep us alive once our rations and water run out.”

“We still have each other,” Steve countered. “We didn’t survive this long just because of sheer luck. We’ve always made things work between us before. We’ll make it work out somehow again.”

Bucky let out a deep sigh. His shoulders dropped. 

“You shouldn’t have done any of this for me, Steve,” he said hollowly. “This isn’t like the time we fought Tony. By running away with a fugitive, you threw away your decades of work guiding Neo Columbia from the inside. I don’t want you to end up regretting this.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Buck. Just you and me against the world while doing what’s right.” 

Steve leaned forward and pulled Bucky into a tight embrace. He could feel Bucky instantly relax in his arms as if he’d been waiting all along for this moment.

“I knew you’d say that,” Bucky repeated softly.

This was a conversation they’d had twice in the past -- in a quinjet gliding over the Arctic before facing Zemo, as well as aboard the Ymir before the departure of Greater Humanity. Each time, Steve had reminded Bucky that he wouldn’t let anyone or anything tear them apart no matter what. If loving Bucky was the wrong thing to do, then Steve was perfectly content with being wrong for the entirety of his two-hundred year lifespan.

_ I’m with you to the end of the line, pal. _

Steve pressed a close-mouthed kiss to Bucky’s cheek. Bucky turned his head just slightly and slid their lips together in a proper mouth-to-mouth kiss. Finally,  _ finally _ , there was nothing between them -- no secrets, no busy schedules, no physical barriers, nothing. The world became just the two of them in an intimate embrace while wearing borrowed hundred-year old lounge clothes.

They kissed until they had to pull away and breathe, warm breath puffing against skin. Steve threaded his fingers through the thin wispy hair around Bucky’s ears. 

“It’s been too long,” Bucky whispered. By God did Steve agree. 

They kissed again. As their lips moved together, Steve’s fingers slid down Bucky’s back to his hips and latched on. At the same time as he lifted Bucky into the air, Steve lifted his legs onto the couch and laid back.

In his haste, Steve had forgotten the width of the couch. Instead of getting Bucky on top of him, Steve inadvertently slipped off the side of the narrow cushions and brought Bucky down with him, limbs flailing. Their joined flesh hands smacked against the coffee table, and Bucky’s left elbow bumped against one of the table legs with a loud clunk. 

Steve landed on his back at an awkward angle with Bucky’s weight pinning him down from above. Bucky hissed with pain into Steve’s ear -- a clear indication that he’d finally let his guard down.

“I can’t feel my fucking arm anymore,” Steve thought he heard Bucky groan. “God.”

When Steve came back to himself a second later, he realized that the surface of the coffee table was now glowing with bright blue light. With a start, he pulled himself up. 

Bucky, having already risen to his knees, pressed one of his flesh fingers to the surface. A band of light rippled across the reflective surface away from the point of contact with a low hum. 

Words unfurled over the surface. “APPROVED USERS DETECTED. CONTENTS: WORLD MAP,” they read. “VIEW?”

Steve froze. There was a hologram projector embedded in the frame of the coffee table. By the looks of it, it wasn’t an early prototype or a civilian model. It was most likely a military model constructed within the last few years. 

A chill ran down Steve’s back. He knew that something didn’t add up. According to Bucky, nobody had been down here at any point in the past century, but there was also no way that a hologram projector this advanced could’ve found its way into a vintage bunker without outside interference. 

“That definitely isn’t suspicious at all,” Bucky said with a grimace, getting to his feet. “I’m sweeping the perimeter. I’ll be back in a few.”

After Bucky disappeared down a side hallway, Steve disposed of the empty food canisters in the kitchen’s garbage processing machine. He sat back down on the couch and watched the glow of the hologram projector rhythmically fade in and out. The words remained unchanged.

A few minutes later, Bucky returned. He settled himself on the couch next to Steve and leaned against his shoulder before giving him the low-down. 

“Besides the coffee table, nothing else in the bunker has been replaced after the first owner left. None of the rooms are traps or bugged, and neither is the yard outside. However, I did find several definitive traces around the house indicating that someone stayed here within the last year. Obviously, they weren’t an envoy from Neo Columbia, or this bunker would have become a Safe Borders outpost by now.”

“But there’s no way that they didn’t come from Neo Columbia or the Ymir Federation,” Steve argued. “This isn’t tech that a wandering outsider would have access to. Who else could’ve put this here?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky admitted. “The trail’s gone cold. There’s no other indication of the previous tenant’s identity anywhere. Whoever they were, they either didn’t stay for long or they cleaned up after themself.” 

Steve pursed his lips. “Then I guess we’ll just have to see if the projector will give us any leads.”

Bucky grunted in agreement and ran his vibranium hand over the length of the coffee table. The words written across the projector’s surface faded. New words appeared: “WORLD MAP INITIALIZING.”

A ball of light rose from the hologram table until it hovered several inches above the coffee table’s surface. The ball unfurled into a topographical map hologram in the shape of a very familiar landmass.

“Holy shit,” Bucky said. 

The hologram map showed the shape of the entire continent down to the most minute detail from coast to coast, far beyond any measurements that the Ymir’s scout drones could’ve taken by themselves. Blinking lights on the map’s surface marked other landmarks and settlements in various colors, resembling constellations or perhaps city lights. 

Steve leaned in for a closer look. He hadn’t seen a map of the entire North American continent in decades, as he hadn’t had any reason to take an expensive return trip to the Ymir mothership in person. But even if he had returned to the Ymir in recent years, he doubted that he would’ve seen a map this advanced anywhere on board. 

Unsurprisingly, the continent still retained its post-Migration shape, the coasts long since swallowed by the ocean after countless calamities. On the map, the region that was once the Southeastern United States still lay underwater with a few scattered islands trailing around the new Gulf coast. Much of the former Eastern seaboard was also submerged, placing Neo Columbia only a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean. On the map’s East Coast, Neo Columbia itself was marked by a gold tube stretching from the East Coast up into the sky. 

Bucky pinched his fingers around the Virginia desert region, zooming in. The map dissolved and then condensed into a map of the deserts. A white star indicated Steve and Bucky’s current location several hundred miles southeast of Neo Columbia, while blue lights blinked at random locations around the deserts. The gold tube representing Tower Aegis loomed ever-present to the north. 

A legend of symbols popped up next to the map.  _ Star - current location. Gold - Aegis Project settlement. Blue - non-Aegis Project settlement. _

Steve spread his fingers around the edge of the hologram, zooming out until the entire continent was visible again. He tapped the blue square on the legend of symbols floating alongside. The other colored lights on the map faded away, leaving an ocean of blue dotting the continent from coast to coast. 

“Those blue lights are all outsider settlements,” Steve said, almost in disbelief. “So that means…”

“We’re not alone out here,” Bucky finished.

Steve tapped on one of the blue lights near the Gulf Coast. Text appeared above it reading “CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI DAM, ESTIMATED POPULATION: 3000”.

He tapped another blue light, this one near the Pacific coast. The text read “COLONY OF THE THREE-HEADED BEAR, ESTIMATED POPULATION: 500.”

Every single marked settlement had populations numbering into the hundreds or thousands. While some of them were named after former military bases or well-known nuclear bunkers, others were based in areas where sturdy protection against the elements should’ve been difficult at best, if not impossible. In that case, how had so many independent settlements existed outside of the Ymir Federation for so long? 

And if this map was accurate, then the Neo Columbia government’s perception that outsiders were mostly runaways and escaped prisoners was completely wrong. If this many settlements dotted the North American wastelands, how come none of them had been detected by the Ymir Federation or the Neo Columbian government? Steve could see in the crease between Bucky’s eyebrows that he was puzzled by the very same questions. 

Tapping on more lights didn’t yield any answers. Other than topographical and population distribution information, the map offered little context for where these settlements had come from and for how long any of them had existed. Whoever created the hologram map likely didn’t see that information as relevant. 

Regardless of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the world that the map represented, there was now some semblance of hope. He and Bucky could find somewhere new to live together in peace far away from Neo Columbia’s sphere of influence. They could build a new life under false names and personas. Perhaps they could even settle down in one of the outsider settlements on the map and do good for a new community that way. 

A sudden burst of dry laughter from Bucky interrupted Steve’s thoughts.

“I was expecting we’d have to wander the wastelands for weeks just to find some outsiders,” Bucky said, leaning forward with his fingers gripping the edge of the coffee table. “But look at all this. I feel like I’ve stumbled into a goddamn all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. Remember when those were a thing?”

“Maybe they’re still a thing in one of these settlements,” Steve suggested half-jokingly. “Some of these names sound fancy. We could go look for crab legs and mac n’ cheese around Wellshire or New Banbury.” 

“Imagine that,” Bucky said, shaking his head with a smile on his face. “Two twentieth-century relics gorging themselves at restaurants that should’ve gone out of business a century ago.”

Steve sidled up closer to Bucky, pressing their shoulders together. “Let’s go on a road trip and look, Buck. It’ll be just the two of us and the open road. How’s that sound?”

Bucky chuckled, leaning into Steve’s shoulder touch. “Sounds good to me, as long as we aren’t being chased by the NCISA for most of it.”

With a flick of his finger, Steve switched the map’s settings into free draw mode. Their fingers now traced paths of light across the landscape connecting landmarks to settlements and settlements to settlements. 

“We could go up towards the north,” Steve suggested, pulling his finger up towards the Great Lakes, but Bucky shook his head before he could continue.

“Too risky,” Bucky said. “There’s a lot of Neo Columbian scrap metal mines and kelp farms in that region.”

Steve pulled his finger in a straight line across the Midwest. “How about this way?”

Bucky shook his head again. “There aren’t enough settlements around that route. We’d run the risk of running out of supplies without anyone to barter or take shelter with.” 

For another half hour, Steve and Bucky traced potential route after potential route over the surface of the North American continent. The lines of light piled on top of each other until they almost resembled a giant spider’s web criss-crossing an entire landmass.

The cracks in Bucky’s functional exterior began to show when he retraced a route that he was now reconsidering despite its proximity to several large Neo Columbian scrap metal mines. The new line of light was shaky and uneven, drastically unlike the fine mechanical line laying underneath.

Steve placed his hand over Bucky’s. He could feel Bucky’s hand almost imperceptibly shaking from exhaustion underneath his. 

“Let’s rest,” he murmured. “We can make more plans tomorrow.”

Bucky grunted in agreement, leaning his head against Steve’s shoulder. Steve rubbed circles into the back of Bucky’s hand and pressed a kiss to his temple. 

Before getting up, Steve swiped up on the hologram to check the map’s metadata. The date of the map was 2217. The information was at most a year old, perhaps less than that. But there was no point of origin or author listed for the map. Still, they had no other information to go off of, so they would have to trust that the map hadn’t been set as a decoy or trap by the last resident of the bunker.

Steve shut the hologram off and looped his arm around Bucky’s shoulders, supporting his weight with his own all the way up the stairs to the second floor. The house’s master bedroom was comfortable and roomy, though otherwise unremarkable and bland, but Steve could do with unremarkable and bland for a change right now. 

Bucky flopped bonelessly onto the bed without so much as tugging the covers around himself. He fell asleep right then and there, face serene and relaxed, despite everything he’d gone through in the past twenty-four hours.

Steve pressed a kiss to his cheek and then looked around the master bedroom. He quickly zeroed in on a semi-hidden control panel in the wall that was apparently connected to the lights in the entire house, as well as the lights in the manufactured yard and sky outside. With some fiddling and poking around the control panel’s menus, he switched the artificial sunlight to moonlight and turned off all of the lights in the house, except for those in the master bedroom and adjacent bathroom. 

While the fluffy sheets beckoned to Steve’s tired and aching muscles, he still had hygiene to maintain. He brushed his teeth, washed his face, and shaved his beard before finally crawling into bed with Bucky with the lights turned off.

Soon, Steve drifted off into a restful slumber,fingers tangled between Bucky’s in their shared bed. 

* * *

  
  


The next morning, Bucky slipped out of bed early in the morning and crept downstairs to the living room. Steve roused slightly at the creak of the mattress underneath his body but immediately drifted back to sleep when he saw that it was just Bucky’s dark silhouette emerging from the covers.

When Steve woke again, Bucky pulled him by the hand up to the garage. Bucky was dressed in pajama pants and a ratty old t-shirt labeled “Kiss The Cook” in Comic Sans, while Steve was even more casually dressed in a pair of boxers that did little to ward off the cold air of the garage, as he’d forgotten to at least pull on a bathrobe. 

“What did you want to show me up here, Buck?” Steve asked as Bucky tugged him over to the spot where the hovercycle was parked. 

Bucky held up his hand indicating that Steve should wait a second. He leaned over and punched a set of coordinates into the hovercycle’s control panel. Steve’s lips quirked up approvingly when he recognized the destination on the map. 

Bucky turned back to him with a crooked smile. “How does seeing the Grand Canyon again sound to you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell that I listened to a lot of synthwave while writing this fic?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chance encounter in the desert stops Steve and Bucky in their tracks.

The route to the Grand Canyon was relatively short as well as mostly free of geographic obstacles and Neo Columbian influence. There was also at least one settlement every fifty or so miles en route, making restocking supplies and refueling less of a gamble than outright scavenging from the wastelands.There were also several large settlements near the Grand Canyon where they could try to find safe harbor afterward. While there was still quite a bit of packing and physical recuperation in their plans before they could head on their way, Steve felt relieved that they now had a plan for the foreseeable future.

For the next few nights, he dreamed of stars glittering above red painted rocks, of campfires crackling warm and bright, of sketches of Bucky’s face with and without him present. Even if the memories were now faded and blurred together after centuries of wistful remembrance, Steve remembered each and every moment.

When they finally left the safe house a few days later, they bulked up with layers of dark protective clothing over their body armor, and took everything they could fit into their backpacks and the hovercycle’s panniers. They knew that they likely couldn’t come back to the bunker again, lest they risk running into an ambush. 

For good measure, Bucky destroyed the hologram table once he’d transferred the map data to the hovercycle’s control panel. With the help of the bunker’s cleaning androids, he also removed all traces of their residence, down to their fingerprints and strands of hair. The fewer methods by which Neo Columbia could trace them, the better. 

Finally, they were both secured to the hovercycle and ready to go. With a flick of Steve’s fingers, the hovercycle revved its engines and began a gradual ascent into the elevator shaft towards the wastelands above. Upon emerging into the harsh elements, the face plates tucked into their face masks unfolded and clicked into place, forming helmets in seconds.

Once the hovercycle’s inner mechanics had adjusted to the additional weight on its back, Steve leaned forward and the hovercycle began ripping across the landscape, leaving dust in its wake.

While the hovercycle cruised across the Virginia deserts, Steve thought about how the helmets in their folded-down positions almost resembled the Winter Soldier’s muzzle. The fully unfolded helmets weren’t much better, their smooth plates and tubes too closely resembling the standard-issue Neo Columbian military helmets for comfort, but they had no other choice than to wear the skins of their enemies out in the unforgiving wastelands. 

A hundred miles out from the bunker, Bucky sighted a Neo Columbian border patrol in the distance. The black-and-gold Safe Borders hovermobile turned and sped towards them, the border patrol agents within already drawing their rifles. 

Bucky pulled out his rifle. He didn’t hesitate. The first shot cleanly pierced through the driver’s head, while the second shot set the fuel tank ablaze. 

The return fire went wide as the enemy hovermobile plummeted towards the ground before finally smashing into a sand dune, throwing up a blast of sand with the impact. Flames soon consumed the wreck. 

Steve pulled the hovercycle to a stop. He and Bucky inspected the wreck, first to make sure that no soldiers were still alive, and secondly, to scavenge for any supplies that may have survived the crash before they were set ablaze. 

One of the border patrol agents had tumbled out of the hovermobile upon impact, dying instantly but avoiding the brunt of the flames. Steve took a mostly undamaged semi-automatic from the corpse’s toolbelt for himself.

Soon, the hovercycle left the wreckage behind, cresting over a rock-studded sand dune. In the distance, a hollow steel structure loomed on the horizon. Below the hovercycle, mostly unidentifiable debris lay beneath a thin layer of sand. 

As they drew closer, Steve realized that the structure was the remains of an abandoned bomb shelter. The shelter now mostly resembled a bleached skeleton, half-buried in the sand, rather than a manmade structure. 

Judging by the state it was in, it most likely dated from the twenty-first or twenty-second century, and had been unearthed by erosion eating away at the desert’s surface. However, a more recently erected defensive hologram border wrapped around the shelter’s perimeter, visibly distorting the dim sunlight more and more as the hovercycle drew closer. Uneasiness pooled in Steve’s gut.

“Stop,” Bucky said behind him. “Something isn’t right.”

Steve pulled the hovercycle to a stop a few hundred feet away from the bomb shelter. He and Bucky dismounted the hovercycle, sand billowing around their feet. They loaded their weapons and stepped forward.

In an instant, they were surrounded by a pack of armored gunmen. Electricity crackled through their guns, loaded and ready to fire. 

The hologram barrier dissolved, revealing reinforcements behind the ambush force. Bucky tapped his fingers on his rifle’s handle, indicating to Steve that there was a sniper’s nest high above them in the bomb shelter’s exposed scaffolding. They were far outnumbered.

“You two Hornets. Drop your weapons,” a silver-haired woman at the front of the pack said, finger ghosting over the trigger. Her face was mostly obscured by goggles and a protective head wrapping. There were no signs or emblems visible anywhere on her beaten and worn body armor.

Steve let the automatic in his hands clatter to the ground, slowly raising his hands in the air while making steady eye contact. While he and Bucky probably could still brute force their way out of this situation, they couldn’t risk bodily injury right now when they only had a half-empty first aid kit on them and no allies to their name. 

At his side, Bucky readjusted his grip on his rifle, apparently unwilling to stand down. The mechanical plates of his vibranium arm faintly whirred with stress. 

“What did you say we were?” Bucky growled.

The silver-haired woman huffed. “Hornets. That is our term for mindless drones mass-produced by the military-industrial machine. You’re wearing Neo Columbian Hornet helmets, and yet one of you discards his weapon and holds up his hands as if you are not a threat. Do forgive me if I find that a little hard to believe.” 

“We’re political exiles from Neo Columbia,” Steve explained. “We wish to request safe harbor with your settlement for the evening. We intend no harm to any outsiders we come across.”

The silver-haired woman quirked her eyebrow. “You are presumptuous to assume that we are merely outsiders and not bandits. However, your presumption is correct. But if your words are true, then why does the dark-haired one keep himself armed even now?”

Bucky glared at the silver-haired woman. The lights in his helmet glowed red. “Who’s to say that you and your band of merry men won’t shoot us as soon as you have an opening?”  
  
“I could say the same to you,” the silver-haired woman coolly replied. “Who is to say that you two are who you say you are? You could be Neo Columbian soldiers sent to infiltrate and destroy us from the inside.”

Steve wordlessly activated his hologram shield and stepped forward, putting himself between the gunmen in front and Bucky behind him. Now that his shield protected the two of them, he removed his helmet and shook his head free. The semi-automatic remained discarded in the sand behind his feet. 

For a long moment, the silver-haired woman eyed Steve’s exposed face and the star emblem emblazoned on the shield. Then, she gestured to her men to lower their weapons.

“Men of your rank are rare this far out in the deserts,” she said. “We will take you elsewhere for questioning. Give us the information about Neo Columbia that we need, and we will give you the safe harbor you request. No harm will come to you so long as you comply. If your answers are inadequate or suspicious, we will not hesitate to dispose of you.” 

Steve retracted his hologram shield. Finally, Bucky gradually relaxed and let his rifle fall out of his hands. He too removed his helmet and stashed it away in compacted mask form, glowering at the outsider gunmen now that his expression was visible.

Several gunmen stepped forward and confisticated their knapsacks and weapons, placing them in the containers they carried on their backs. After a moment of quiet deliberation among themselves, they let Steve keep his wristwatch, though they still kept their eyes on him, as if he could press his shield to their throats at any moment. Handcuffs were fastened around their wrists, though Steve didn’t doubt that he and Bucky could break through them if necessary.

Outside, a caravan of hovertrucks hovered quietly behind the ruins of the bomb shelter. While one group of gunmen escorted Steve and Bucky toward the caravan, another throng of gunmen hoisted Steve and Bucky’s hovercycle on their shoulders and carried into the cargo hold of a hovertruck at the caravan’s rear. 

“You sure you’re not bandits?” Bucky quipped. The soldiers remained stone-faced.

Now weaponless and cargoless, Steve and Bucky marched up a ramp into a cargo hold that smelled faintly of animal manure. Behind them, the exit was closed with the audible groan of multiple locks fastening shut. The only light inside of the hold came through the narrow air slats lining the upper edges. 

For an indeterminate amount of time, the caravan of hovertrucks wound through the deserts. Steve quickly lost track of how many times the caravan turned a corner, stopped, or even went into reverse. 

At some point, he reached out and wrapped his pinky around Bucky’s, keeping them connected to each other even as the dark cargo hold lurched around.

Finally, the caravan came to a stop as the rays of sunlight grew dimmer and dimmer. The same gunmen from the bomb shelter opened the reinforced back door and escorted Steve and Bucky down the ramp to their destination.

In this area, the sand was oddly placid, with only small wisps of dust rising from the ground every now and then. The rich reds, golds, and violets of twilight bled over the horizon as the sun gradually sank behind the sand dunes in the distance. Somehow, the scene was almost as beautiful as it was desolate. 

Resting on a nearby crest of sand was a small, dilapidated house -- more of a shack, if anything. The gunmen escorted Steve and Bucky to the doorway and stood guard outside the doorway.

For some reason, the only person to accompany them into the shack was the silver-haired woman, her goggles now pulled up to her forehead, revealing her piercing amber eyes. The skin around her exposed nose and eyes was tan and wrinkled as if made from thick leather. Despite her aged appearance, her inner strength reminded Steve of Nat or Okoye -- though there was no innate connection between him and her like what he had once felt between himself and Nat, nor was there any of the camaraderie he’d formed with Okoye and the Dora Milaje during Wakanda’s Golden Age.

The shack’s narrow interior contained several cots lined up in two vertical rows next to the walls. Sealed crates sat in the back in stacks of two or three. Dust motes floated in the light filtering through the slimy windows. 

“You are not prisoners,” the silver-haired woman said. With a wave of her hand, the handcuffs loosened and clattered to the floor. “You may seat yourselves and make yourselves comfortable. But you should still not feel too comfortable. You two still reek of the city.”

As Steve and Bucky seated themselves on one of the cots, a group of outsiders stopped by the open doorway, clothes caked with sand and dust. These outsiders lacked the body armor and stern expressions of the gunmen from before, indicating that they likely originated from another hovertruck in the caravan. 

“Aisha,” one of the men said. “You have a visitor waiting for you at base.”

The silver-haired woman, apparently named Aisha, glanced sideways at the man. “Tell them that I am entertaining visitors of my own for the moment.”

“Understood,” the male outsider affirmed. “We will leave you to it.”

“I never imagined The Captain and his loyal companion would become desert vagabonds one day,” Aisha said, closing the door behind her. “I suppose that anything is possible in a world where a glorified elevator can connect the earth to space itself.”

“So you do recognize him,” Bucky said. 

“Only in passing.” Aisha crossed her arms. “We occasionally intercept Neo Columbian broadcasts and shipments. Your face is very recognizable, Captain.” 

“What questions do you have for us?” Steve asked, entwining his fingers together. 

“I only have one question,” Aisha replied. “It is the same question I ask everyone who seeks safe harbor in our settlement, whether they are a trespasser or a refugee. What brought you here?”

Steve explained. He told his story from Neo Columbia’s founding to the present day, though he only offered sparse details on the years leading up to the current year, 2218 AD, when President Salva and the Senate Council’s already-burgeoning expansionism and protectionism had become the primary focus of all Neo Columbian politics down to their ousting of traitors both real and perceived. Occasionally, Bucky would provide clarification or additional details at points where Steve either hadn’t understood what had happened or hadn’t experienced it himself.

“Your story is fascinating,” Aisha said when Steve had finally finished talking. “I will admit that you two are not who I assumed you were. However, you are not innocents in this situation either.”

She pointed at Steve. “You were one of the founders of that accursed city. The greediness and corruption you saw were not independent from your actions. From the beginning, you had the power to improve the system from the ground up. But you did not, and you only now see the error of your ways once that system turned on one of its own. You could envision no other society than a broken one, and now you have reaped what you have sown.”

She then pointed at Bucky. “And you, you only took action against Neo Columbia when approached by a colleague of your husband’s rather than reaching out to your husband yourself. You are only a little better than him. While your recent actions were more radical than his, you still wasted your influence and talents on mindless self-indulgent pursuits for decades while the masses suffered under the boot of their oppressors. In escaping your past, you discarded everything you once stood for.”

Silence hung heavy over the shack. The sound of a million sand grains bouncing against the thin sheet metal walls outside echoed through the room. 

“There was nothing else we could do,” Steve finally said, meeting Aisha’s glare. “We’ve lived for long enough, made enough mistakes, seen enough bloodshed. Politics was the best, most peaceful method of change available to us old men.”

“That is where you went wrong,” Aisha said coldly. “For as long as that city has existed, blood was shed away from your eyes. You never cared enough to look.”

Aisha began unfastening her armor and loosening the buckles keeping her protective clothing together. When she saw Steve and Bucky’s wide, alarmed eyes, she smirked. 

“I am not stripping out of any sense of intimacy with you two. I do not feel that sort of emotion with either strangers or men. I simply have something underneath my clothing to show you.”

Aisha pulled her shirt over her shoulders and tossed it onto a cot, revealing -- Steve’s breath hitched.   
  


Her torso and arms were nearly all undisguised augmentations. Skin, muscle, sinew -- all of it unlike anything Steve had seen before. Unlike the artfully crafted, well-oiled augmentations of an ordinary Neo Columbian citizen, however, she was composed almost entirely of rusted jagged metal. And where augmentations met flesh and bone around her neck, ugly knotted scar tissue twisted towards her jawbone. 

“I was once a beggar girl in the outer districts,” Aisha explained, running her fingers over the circuitry running through her ribcage. “Nobody protected me when my parents were executed for a crime they did not commit. I survived on my own for as long as I could. But when the doctors approached me on my fourteenth birthday, I could not read the papers they gave me. They took everything from me.”

Next to Steve, Bucky tightened his hands in his lap. His eyes were fixed unblinking on the scar tissue around Aisha’s neck. Steve placed his hands reassuringly over Bucky’s.

“My body was dismantled piece by piece,” Aisha continued. “Each time they removed a part, they would replace it with an augmentation that was too dangerous, too experimental to try on someone whose life mattered. I went to sleep with one body and woke up with another. Sometimes, the new body would be better, but most times it destroyed me from the inside until the doctors decided to try again. For years, this was my life. I wanted the pain to stop, I wanted it to all end. But no matter what I did, nothing ever changed.”

Aisha’s eyes flickered to meet Steve’s, icy cold and burning hot all at once. “Many years later, I found out that my original organs saved the lives of several Senators. Most of the augmentations first installed in my body were the prototypes for essential augmentation models that would improve the lives of many. The other augmentations later became the most popular augmentations on the market. But did that make the endless suffering of a girl worthwhile? Was my life worth less than theirs?”

On some level, Steve knew already that something this horrible could happen. He knew that the Neo Columbian judiciary system was often overly harsh and punishing -- a product of a society that emerged from the darkest days in human history. Neo Columbian politicians ran for office on platforms advocating for even tougher punishments and stricter laws precisely because most Neo Columbian citizens knew from humanity’s own history about what could happen if crime ran rampant. 

He also knew that the lack of manpower after the post-Migration population shrink had created a job market where tireless androids filled most essential worker and manual labor jobs while humans filled out the decently paid ranks of white-collar industries, the arts, and politics. But even then, both augmented and non-augmented citizens fell through the cracks of society. Many of the policies Steve had advocated for in the Senate Council were directed towards supporting the lower classes who had fallen on financial or personal misfortunes through no fault of their own. Still, many politicians opposed expanding social programs any further, and so Neo Columbia still possessed a social class of impoverished citizens.

However, understanding these facets of Neo Columbian society in the abstract and conceptual was entirely different from seeing the consequences right before his eyes. He grit his teeth. If he still had influence in Neo Columbia, he would’ve found out which Senators had benefited from Aisha’s suffering and found some way to bring justice. But there was now nothing he could do, and he had to live with that. 

“Your life wasn’t worth less than theirs,” Bucky said, voice low and soft. “What happened to you during that time doesn’t define who you are now. No matter how much your suffering influenced the world for better or for worse, your sacrifice wasn’t yours to make. You should’ve been the one to decide what your life means to you.”

“Your words are what I would have wanted to hear in my younger years,” Aisha replied. “But I am no longer defined by that suffering. I only ask you those questions so that you can answer them for yourselves. And why do you say those words with such certainty, Sergeant?” 

“I wasn’t in control of my body for the better part of a century,” Bucky admitted. “When I finally broke free, I had to deal with the consequences of my actions on my own. Hell, I still have to live with those consequences centuries later. But I got help eventually, and I found myself some real great friends who made me realize everything I just told you.”

“And the friend who saved you would later become the husband who now sits by your side,” Aisha said. “Do not give me those surprised looks. It is obvious from the way you two act around each other. I would have to be blind to not see it.” 

Bucky curled his arm around Steve’s lower back and arched an eyebrow at Aisha. “You’re sharp. Say, if you were blind, would you have noticed if Steve and I acted like a lovey-dovey married couple the whole time?”

Aisha curled her lip. “Please restrain yourselves in front of me. You are not my friends. Also, you are hundreds of years older than you first appear. That is unsettling by itself. Do not add to that.”

Steve and Bucky chuckled at that. Aisha smirked. For a moment, the tension in the shack broke. Then, Aisha schooled her face back into coolness and neutrality. She silently pulled her shirt back on.

“I did not have a romantic knight in shining armor carrying me away into the sunset. I am still alive only because of the ordinary men and women who saved me,” Aisha continued. “You know them as outsiders, but they are my kinsmen regardless of birth. We work together towards shared goals. To sustain ourselves, we borrow pre-processed kelp shipments and medicine from envoys. Usually the drivers do not even notice.”

“Those kelp shipments and medicines are meant for Neo Columbian citizens,” Steve pointed out almost reflexively. 

“That is not our primary concern,” Aisha said. “We prioritize our own first and foremost. In fact, one of our goals is to make life harder for the elites in that accursed city.”

Steve furrowed his eyebrows. “You call Neo Columbia an accursed city?”

“You are unused to curses directed at your project,” Aisha said matter-of-factly. “While I am of Neo Columbian origin, many of my kinsmen have continuously survived in the wastelands for generations separate from the space travelers of the last century. We curse the name of that city because it seized land that was never theirs while claiming that they were shining a guiding light for all of humanity. Many once-peaceful settlements have been destroyed by the Neo Columbian military so that kelp farms and scrap metal processing facilities could be built on their ashes.” 

Aisha smiled humorlessly. “In the end, Neo Columbia is no different from Greater Humanity. You speak of grand aspirations while tossing away the wellbeing of the unworthy. You rectify your past mistakes by repeating them with only slight alterations. That means that we will always oppose the government that you men nurtured and enabled.” 

Steve tightened the muscles in his jaw. He didn’t have answers for the accusations that Aisha leveled at him with her piercing eyes and pointed words. 

“So you consider yourselves an opposition force to Neo Columbia,” Bucky said, leaning forward. He was likely thinking about the outsiders his movement had ties with. If he was perturbed by Aisha’s accusations, he didn’t show it. 

“Yes. We call ourselves the Resistance,” Aisha replied. “We are not the same as the secretive society of scheming elites that you were a member of, Sergeant. We are simply the people for whom the guiding light of the future does not guide and the shield of humanity does not protect. We exist in opposition to the empty promises and systemic failures of a broken project. That is _why_ we are called the Resistance.”

_The Resistance._ Such a movement could exist outside of Neo Columbia’s walls. Even though the Senate Council hadn’t officially recognized any outsider settlements as sovereign entities, there was still considerable collaboration and organization between outsiders. 

“At the moment, we do not pose an existential threat to that accursed city. We oppose the city so that we can survive free from an oppressive society. But not every outsider settlement is allied with us, and many in fact disagree with our methods. Sometimes we even come into conflict, and one or both sides lose men and territory. However, the ones that did not originate from nuclear bunker societies or secret cults are usually sympathetic to us. We collaborate with each other for supplies and knowledge.” 

“How many settlements are allied with the Resistance?” Steve asked. 

Aisha pulled out a device. With a flick of her hand, a hologram map appeared displaying the North American continent. While the overall topography was identical to the map currently installed in Steve and Bucky’s hovercycle, the settlements on her map were color-coded in far more detail.

“The settlements marked in green are known Resistance allies,” Aisha explained. “We use other colors for settlements known to be allied with other organizations or the Aegis Project. Settlements marked with multiple colors change allegiances depending on what serves them best. Settlements that we have no data on are marked in grey.”

On the eastern seaboard, most settlements were marked green, with just a handful marked with other colors. Deeper in the Midwest and along the Gulf coast, more settlements were marked with other colors or grey, though green settlements still numbered in the dozens. An idea formed in Steve’s head. 

“Aisha. I haven’t known you for very long, but I would like to ask you a favor,” he said.

Aisha flicked the device off and crossed her arms expectantly. “What kind of favor?”

“Bucky and I were heading west to find a new place to live before we ran into you. We’ll give whatever we can to the Resistance in exchange for safe harbor with the other Resistance settlements.”

Aisha looked at them strangely. “Perhaps if I had met you two when I was younger, I would have cursed your existence and then demanded you ensure that another Aisha never suffers in that city. But you do not have that power now that you are out here, and I am not a vengeful woman anymore. There is nothing else I personally need from you besides the information you already gave me.” 

“There’s nothing else we can offer you?” Steve said, disbelieving -- not out of self-importance, but out of surprise. For decades, there always had been something that people wanted from him, even if it wasn’t what he initially offered. 

At his side, Bucky grunted frustratedly. The plates in his vibranium arm shifted and clicked uneasily, as if he was judging their chances of reaching the Grand Canyon with no aid whatsoever.

Aisha chuckled. “Do not worry yourselves, white boys. We are still empathetic people. We will give you some of the supplies you need for your journey. I will also give you an emblem signaling to other Resistance camps that you are currently allies to our cause. But you are still not one of us. You must leave our presence at daybreak and never return.”

Steve bit his lip and nodded. “We agree to your terms.”

The orange twilight had now faded into lavender dusk. Aisha rose, pulling the curtains on the windows shut. She paused for a moment to glance back at Steve and Bucky. 

“On your search for a new home, remember this. As long as we remain outsiders, we will always have a Resistance,” Aisha said. “And as long as Neo Columbia remains as it is now, there will always be outsiders.”

* * *

When the caravan took Steve and Bucky to the nearest Resistance encampment, Aisha escorted them to a small tent situated on the outskirts of the area. A few residents with haggard faces and rusted full-body augmentations watched them carefully from open doorways. However, most of the encampment’s residents were seemingly already asleep, with the gunmen heading to a tent on the other side of the encampment, where a few late-evening stragglers gathered.

The tent itself was obviously constructed with the lowest quality materials available, though it was still sturdy enough to withstand the harsh gusts blowing across the desert. The air was warm and clean with average humidity, as machines installed in the sparse furnishings quietly regulated the environment within the tent. A single bed consisting of a worn recycled plastic frame and a sagging mattress sat in the middle. 

While Bucky cleaned himself up inside of the attached one-stall bathroom, Steve sat down on the mattress and stared at his feet, finally letting exhaustion sink into his bones. He could feel Aisha’s eyes burning a hole through the crown of his head.

“I will never see either of you again,” Aisha said. She spoke these words like they were immutable facts. 

“I understand,” Steve said. At this point, he knew that there were some wounds that couldn’t be healed, some injustices that couldn’t be apologized for. If his and Bucky’s presence in Aisha’s life was a reminder of the torture she’d endured in Neo Columbia, then there was nothing they could do or say to change that, not without hurting her even more.

“You two are not the first centenarians I have met. You may not be the last.”

Steve looked up. Aisha was still standing by the door, her arms crossed. The lamplight at her back cast a glow around her dark silhouette.

“I have encountered many different types in the wastelands. There are androids who have dutifully performed their tasks for many decades, as well as many wanderers who tell tall tales about past centuries. The most memorable of them all was the scientist who gave me my map of the continent. He did not tell me much about himself, but I knew that he arrived in our territory because he crashed a spaceship into the desert and that he was at least a century old, probably older. He said that he had plans to build a settlement on the Pacific Coast and study the wildlife there. As soon as he gave me that map, he was already on his way.” 

“You’ve told us a lot of information for people you’ll never see again,” Steve observed.

“That is precisely why I have told you and your husband so much, Captain,” Aisha said. “We will never see each other again, so I may tell you as much as I wish. This will always be between just the three of us. There is no other meaning or motivation behind my words.”

After Aisha left the tent, Steve stripped down to his undergarments and laid down on the bed unceremoniously, closing his eyes. 

Thoughts rattled around in his head even as his tired muscles sank into the dingy mattress. Finding and punishing the doctors who had nearly killed Aisha wouldn’t give her her original body back. 

The scars and augmentations of Aisha’s body flashed before Steve’s eyes. Even in a society which, in concept, allowed all of its citizens to pursue their life callings freely without worry of limitations or suffering, there were still people who suffered in the shadows. For the first time in decades, he let the tide of guilt and regret wash over him unsuppressed. When was the last time he had walked into the neediest sections of Neo Columbia himself instead of advocating on their part while standing thousands of feet above them?

He scrunched his eyebrows together. He couldn’t grow complacent again. Guilt did him no favors. He would have to simply do better in the future. Serving humanity didn’t only mean serving the government of Neo Columbia and the Aegis Project. Even if helping the common people of Neo Columbia was now out of his reach, there were hundreds of settlements across the continent that he and Bucky could help. 

But he and Bucky were now both past their physical primes, even if the serum had greatly slowed their aging and extended their lifespans beyond what was normally humanly possible. Aging aside, the decades they had spent in and out of cryosleep as residents of the Ymir Federation and later as non-combatant civilians of Neo Columbia hadn’t helped their physical capabilities either. They could no longer remain awake for days on end without stopping like they once could. Now, there was only so much ground they could cover in a day before they had to rest.

The sound of running water in the bathroom stall abruptly stopped. Steve heard Bucky shove the door open and pad over to Steve’s side of the mattress, skin smelling faintly of soap.

“Looks like you’re thinking about important things in your sleep, pal,” Bucky murmured, brushing his fingers along Steve’s beard. “I’m sure you’ll tell me all about them when we hit the road in the morning. You’ll have plenty of time.” 

Bucky chuckled to himself. A moment later, he pulled the provided blanket over Steve’s shoulders, then pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek. “Good night, Steve.”

The lights went out. Steve could feel the mattress dip to his side as Bucky laid down next to him. Just as Steve knew that Bucky had overheard his last conversation with Aisha, Bucky knew that Steve wasn’t actually asleep. Neither of them said anything, already content in knowing what the other already knew. 

They fell asleep with their bodies just slightly touching, their shared body heat warming the ragged blanket they lay under.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I had a lot of fun writing Aisha. She probably stole the show in this chapter, haha


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky go on a road trip.

In the early morning, the encampment came alive with the sounds of families going about their morning affairs while a hundred breakfasts cooked over rudimentary open fires. As per their agreement with Aisha, Steve and Bucky would have no part in this routine, instead drinking from bowls of kelp stew that were left inside the door and then slipping through a side exit away from the commons area. A message outside the tent door informed them that their belongings and vehicle were docked outside the encampment waiting for them. 

As Steve and Bucky trudged across the sand, two children emerged from behind a rock formation to stare curiously at Bucky’s vibranium arm. They too had augmentations covering large chunks of their bodies, only their own augmentations were made of scrap metal rather than high-grade vibranium. 

They pointed at Bucky’s vibranium arm, then at Steve’s face.

“City soldier,” the long-haired one said. “Poster man. Scary, scary.”

A woman in the commons area called out to the children in a language Steve didn’t understand. The children glanced at Bucky, then glanced back at the woman before scampering back to the encampment. 

Underneath the protective tarp shielding it from the relentless sandy wind, the hovercycle had been untouched except for the removal of the panniers, which now sat unlocked on top of the driver and passenger seats next to their confiscated armor and weapons. 

Steve opened the panniers. The rations and supplies that he and Bucky had raided from the Safe Borders outpost and the nuclear bunker were all still there, with a few kelp crackers scattered throughout like a strange half-hearted gift from the Resistance. All of the carbo-fuel canisters had been topped off with fresh fuel, likely enough to last several hundred more miles. An emblem made from scrap metal rested on top of the canisters, bearing a sigil and a message written in several languages stating that the bearers were friends of the Resistance -- Aisha’s emblem. 

Sitting on top of the rations, crackers, carbo-fuel canisters, and emblem was a data transfer device labeled “AISHA’S MAP - DESTROY AFTER TRANSFER”. Bucky reached over, plucked it out of the container, and plugged it into the control panel. As soon as the data transfer was completed, he crushed the device in his palm and stomped on the remains until they disintegrated into miniscule shards.

The updated map showed that they were now just outside of Neo Columbia’s sphere of influence, as this settlement rested on the border between the Virginia deserts and the Appalachian mountains. Aisha’s data catalogue of Resistance-allied settlements, safe houses, and supply points interfaced cleanly with the map already installed in the hovercycle’s control panel, as if it had been intended as a peripheral add-on. Steve inferred that the two maps likely pulled from the same source of data. If that was the case, then the mysterious visitor to the bunker had likely been the same scientist that Aisha had met several years ago. 

And if that scientist was who Steve suspected he was, then one day Steve and Bucky would meet him again somewhere, somehow.

* * *

The end destination was still the Grand Canyon, but the route was now slightly different. They would have to avoid several settlements that were marked as outside of the Resistance’s network, as there was no guarantee that non-Resistance settlements would provide shelter to two foreign wanderers. 

The first settlement that Steve and Bucky stopped by on their new route was a small mining town near a scrap metal mine nestled in the lower end of the Appalachians. The exposed rock terrain of the mountainside provided little cover, so a patrol caught them long before the mining town itself could come into view.

Steve and Bucky slowly and silently dismounted the hovercycle as the patrol circled in on them. When the patrolmen drew close enough, Steve held up Aisha’s emblem. The sight of the Resistance’s sigil gave the patrolmen pause. 

A man clad in loose-fitting body armor and protective goggles stepped forward and squinted at the emblem. “You’re Resistance folk.”

“We’re wanderers,” Steve explained. “We work with the Resistance sometimes. We’ll give you our services for a day in exchange for food and shelter.”

The man eyed them up and down. “You men look awfully strong and well-fed for wanderers. I don’t like the look of your helmets, either. Hand that emblem over.”

Steve obliged. He could sense Bucky shifting restlessly behind him, watching in case any of the patrolmen took the opportunity to strike. 

The man turned the emblem over in his hands, seeming to check its authenticity, before flipping a switch that covered the emblem’s surface with a text hologram that read, “NOT TAMPERED WITH. SIGNED, AISHA”. 

“Very well,” the man grunted. “We will provide what you ask. There is a job that you two would be well-suited for.”

As it turned out, the job was unloading large unprocessed scrap metal chunks from a four-wheeled truck and placing them on a conveyor belt leading to the town’s foundry. Several workers were already busy working on this task. At first, Steve and Bucky’s ease at carrying chunks of metal that otherwise would’ve taken ten men to lift earned them surprised and slightly suspicious looks from the workers. When it became clear that Steve and Bucky were focused only on helping, however, they turned back to their tasks. 

“It’s been a while since I could air my grievances to a pair of listening ears,” a worker said as he shoveled scrap metal bits out of a trough and onto the conveyor belt. “You two are the first visitors we’ve had in a year. Good thing you came today, too, or we would’ve had a lotta trouble getting all this scrap metal to the foundry before sundown.”

“Would’ve been easier if we’d kept some of the city bastard hovering vehicles,” another worker shouted from the other side of the conveyor belt. “Maybe then we wouldn’t have to rely on this dang wheely truck for carrying cargo with.”

“So this town used to be a Neo Columbian outpost,” Steve said in a bland tone of voice. He didn’t want to pass judgement or push the conversation when he had much more to gain from just listening.

“Those bastards took our land at gunpoint,” the worker closest to Steve hissed. “No treaties, no diplomacy, no nothing. Just the barrel of a gun and the bite of a bullet. And it definitely wasn’t for their common folk -- what kind of regular joe needs ten million pounds of scrap metal more than we need a home? No, those seizures benefitted the elites first and foremost. They take and take and take without ever giving back. You’re a good listener, you know that?”

Steve grunted noncommittally. He thought over the man’s words as he worked in silence for the next few hours.

By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, the truck had been completely unloaded. The workers went their separate ways, scattering to various stone cabins around the settlement while Steve and Bucky were escorted to a small empty cabin on the perimeter.

When Steve and Bucky left the next day, an old woman pressed containers filled with dried fruits and jerky into their hands on their way to the hovercycle. 

“If you men are interested in taking a beach vacation around this time of year, I hear the Gulf coast is quite nice,” the old woman said. “There’s some beaches down there that are quite clean. Maybe you’ll even find some sand.”

* * *

No pale sandy beaches greeted Steve and Bucky when they arrived at the coast of the Gulf Sea. Instead, the burned remains of a settlement jutted out from the uneven shoreline like the ribs of a fallen giant. 

Still, the ocean water was crisp and clean, free of contaminants, so Steve and Bucky removed their shoes and waded in. They removed their protective helmets and let the warm salty breeze fill their nostrils. Soon, they were splashing water on each other like they were kids at Coney Island again, laughing as Bucky got saltwater up his nose and kicked saltwater droplets at Steve in retaliation. 

When they finally emerged from the waves thoroughly soaked, they sat together on the warm rocky beach and ate their rations, silently enjoying the ocean waves along with the taste of the food. 

Further along the coast, they encountered an oddity. The hollow, skeletal body of an android lay near the ocean, insides exposed and half-filled with debris and rocks. 

Steve knelt down next to the corpse and brushed his hand over the dusty outer surfaces. The android likely hadn’t felt anything in its last moments, as it could only perceive and process certain stimuli to fulfill its narrow purpose. This was by design, as after the twenty-first century, androids were tightly regulated on an international level to ensure that they would never gain a level of sentience that could create ethical and social issues. As such, Steve hadn’t ever regarded the androids of the twenty-third century as equivalent to old friends like Vision. 

But regardless of the materials the android was made from, a half-decomposed corpse buried in the rubble was a testament to how desolate much of the Earth still was. Even if there were now fish, birds, and a myriad of mutated vegetation populating the wastelands, there was still a deep sense of greater loss that permeated the world from sea to sky. 

* * *

Something about spending his days out in the open wastelands intensified Steve’s nightmares. Perhaps it was the sudden rush of stress and stimuli that disturbed his sleep, or perhaps it was something else. Whatever the cause was, his nightmares went from monthly occurrences to near-nightly. 

Not every nightmare took the same form. Sometimes they would begin relatively tame, starting with him and Bucky enjoying domestic life in a past century before the fight would come to them one way or another. Other times, he would be choked by a conflagration or consumed by a tempest with no method of escape except feebly curling into himself. 

The worst nightmares, however, were the replays of all of the mistakes he’d made, all the lives he couldn’t save. He saw the serum mutating until his skin peeled off and revealed red scarred flesh underneath. He saw himself dying before Bucky, or Bucky dying before him, leaving the other a hollow husk without their other half in their twilight years. 

On many nights, Steve awakened not knowing where or when he was, panic set deep in his bones. He would tighten his fingers in soft blankets and roll over to find Bucky’s now-awake form pressed against him. When he curled closer to Bucky’s shoulder and inhaled his musky scent, he would suddenly remember that he was somewhere on the Midwestern plains in the year 2218 on the run from a city of his own making with the most important person in his world at his side. 

When Steve finally relaxed, Bucky would quietly ask him about how he’d slept. Sometimes Steve could answer honestly, recounting the terrible sights he witnessed in his dreams. Other times, he could only offer silence or a few bland words. 

Either way, Bucky understood. He offered physical comfort in return, carding his fingers through Steve’s hair or massaging circles into his back, or both. Steve would drift into a second more peaceful slumber with the sound of his husband’s heartbeat thumping rhythmically against his ear. 

Bucky’s nightmares also returned. This was something Steve knew down to his very bones. But Bucky still wasn’t as openly vulnerable as Steve even after decades of domestic half-retirement. There were only a few nights where Steve provided the same routine of listening and comfort after Bucky jolted awake in the night with enough movement to startle Steve awake. Most nights, Steve could only hope that his physical proximity to Bucky was comforting enough. 

* * *

The half-collapsed city was visible from afar, as it was situated on a flat plateau with only a few hills surrounding it. As they grew closer, Steve could see that the reservoir that once supplied the city with fresh water had long flooded the lower half of the city, leaving only a few charred building skeletons standing guard on higher ground. The city must’ve had a name at some point, but at this point it was known only as Mangrove Point because of the city’s apparent resemblance to a flooded forest of mangrove trees. 

The map that Aisha had given them had identified that there were several Resistance supply points around this area that contained carbo-fuel cores and dry rations for wayward travelers. There were also several Resistance-affiliated cave dwellings around fifty miles away that would provide a secure, dry place to sleep for a night. 

As Steve gradually lowered the hovercycle towards cruising level, the air quality readings within his helmet blinked green to indicate that it was safe to remove his mask. He signaled the face plates to fold back into a ring wrapped around his neck. He knew that it would quickly unfold if his face or head needed to be covered again at a moment’s notice. 

When he inhaled, his eyes widened at just how crisp and fresh the air smelled. The air in both the spaceship Ymir and Neo Columbia was manufactured, overly filtered until it was nearly devoid of any scent at all. Before now, he never could have imagined that he would one day experience this feeling of tranquility again.

Beneath his feet, the surface of the water was almost perfectly smooth and placid with only a few hair-thin ripples traveling across the surface in the hovercycle’s wake. 

When they rounded the corner, Steve drew in a breath at the beauty of the carpet of lily pads covering what had once been a flooded urban park. The only sound in the air besides the thrum of the hovercycle’s pressurized engines was the buzzing of water insects and the faraway cries of birds. 

“It’s goddamn beautiful,” Bucky said, filling in what Steve had been thinking. 

The first supply point was underneath the feet of a statue standing on an abandoned brick building above a public square. Someone else had already cleared out the dry rations packs, leaving only a half-eaten granola bar behind, but the nanocarbon fuel cores were still intact. Steve watched the fuel gauge on the dash fill with light as Bucky loaded the cores into the fuel port. 

The second supply point was on the other side of town and was completely untouched, as it was sealed within a locked safe that only opened to the keycard that Aisha had given them. They sat together on a rocky outcropping overlooking the city and unwrapped the dry rations, taking bites out of their dried fruit and oatmeal bars while enjoying the fresh air in silence.

* * *

  
  


There were many more abandoned overgrown cities like Mangrove Point lining the Gulf coast. In this region, the air was clear and the soil clean enough that vegetation thrived between rusted steel and crumbling concrete. The green foliage was a stark contrast to the dirt browns, reds, and grays of the desolate Virginia deserts in Steve’s mind. He never could’ve dreamed that there was substantial life far outside of Neo Columbia’s sterile, tightly controlled desert bubble in the modern day. 

As they drove further and further away from the Appalachians, areas overcast with lingering industrial pollution and sandstorms grew further and further in between. Somewhere near the western edge of the Gulf coast, the air quality on the open expanse even improved enough that Steve and Bucky could remove their protective helmets in the open for prolonged periods of time without dissolving into coughing fits. 

Further away from the coast, the landscape turned into flat grassy plains beneath clear skies. Settlements were fewer and farther in between in this region, so there came a night where their only place to rest was the uninhabited grassy wilderness. They chose a spot situated close to the crest of a hill with a nearby copse of newly grown trees. 

As the wisps of smoke wound their way from the campfire into the cool night air, Steve leaned into Bucky’s enveloping embrace and closed his eyes as if he were still ninety pounds soaking wet.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Steve said sleepily against Bucky’s cheek.

Bucky grunted, exhaling warm breath. “I think I know.”

“Before Sam and the others died. I remember we used to spend a lot of nights curled up together like this keeping each other warm after a long day of helping people.” Steve sighed. “But then life grew crazy, and crazier, and for a long time there weren’t any more forests to sleep in anymore. I really missed this.”

Bucky sighed, running his fingers through Steve’s hair. “We could’ve gone camping together earlier if that’s what you wanted all this time, Steve. It’s not like the simulation rooms in Tower Aegis are just for sparring.”

“Not the same,” Steve insisted. “I don’t think any of the techs back in Neo Columbia understand what a pine tree smells like. Always smells like I’m cleaning toilets in Stark Tower and not taking a hike through Yosemite.”

Bucky chuckled, his chest pressing against Steve’s back. “Good thing the real deal’s grown back so that you don’t have to remember the days of flushing toilets, old man.”

Steve punched Bucky’s flesh forearm. “Jerk.”

“Punk,” was Bucky’s practiced response. 

They fell into easy, comfortable silence after that. Just as the wastelands brought out their old nightmares and regrets, they also brought out the people that Steve and Bucky were beneath political advisor and figurehead “The Captain” and his reclusive husband. 

The rest of the evening was beyond anything Steve could’ve dreamed of finding out in the wastelands. He and Bucky roasted fresh meat and produce they’d received from coastal settlements over the campfire and gobbled down the perfectly crispy results. They then bemoaned their lack of ingredients for s’mores while pointing out various constellations glowing and glittering in the perfectly clear night sky. And when exhaustion finally settled into their muscles, they huddled together for warmth within their shared sleeping bag and fell asleep to the tune of crickets chirping in the grass around them. 

* * *

Days blended into weeks into months of travel. Steve and Bucky stayed at many more settlements, exchanging their knowledge and physical strength for food, carbo-fuel, and a place to spend the night. While Aisha hadn’t asked either of them to help the Resistance or any of the outsider settlements, Steve wouldn’t be at ease if he wasn’t doing as much as he could for humanity. If there was a reason that the serum had kept him and Bucky alive for this long, this had to be it. 

There were so many different settlements in the western region of the North American continent that their initial goal of reaching the Grand Canyon became more of a distant dream. There were simply too many settlements to help and not enough time on Steve and Bucky’s hands.

Eventually, Bucky’s hair grew so long that he had to chop half of it off with a knife just to keep it shoulder-length. He tied his hair back in a bun so that stray hairs wouldn’t fall in his eyes. Meanwhile, Steve kept his hair and beard closely trimmed so that his protective helmet would fit securely around his head. Sometimes people recognized him as The Captain or would identify Bucky as originating from “that city”, but most of the time he and Bucky easily passed for just another two worn and weary wanderers with mysterious pasts. Men like them were rare but not unheard of among the settlements. However, there were no more signs of the mysterious scientist who had created the map in the bunker and in Aisha’s device.

In the back of Steve’s mind, he knew that Neo Columbia would eventually track them down. While the Ymir Federation was unable to track signals too far removed from Aegis Project settlements, he and Bucky were simply too important and too volatile to ignore forever. Someday, Neo Columbia would send out a drone, a scouting party, or even a spy, and then Steve and Bucky would have to confront the past. 

Before then, they would do as much as they could for all of humanity. 

* * *

One of the Resistance-affiliated settlements on the Midwest plains was a small town constructed downstream from a large river dam that provided hydroelectricity for the community. The settlement’s residents allotted Steve and Bucky several bowls of warm soup paired with pork and freshly baked bread in exchange for a few days of physical labor at the local bread mill. 

The bread mill appeared old and weathered from the outside, perhaps English-style. However, the wooden wheel that cut through the stream was outfitted with wires and plates that were likely scavenged from nearby industrial waste dumps. 

There were two people who worked regularly at the mill -- an older man and his younger nonbinary life partner. There were rumors that they were both exiles from Neo Columbia, which was known as the “Eastern City” out here, although nobody around town sounded sure when asked about when or why the old couple at the bread mill had become exiles.

A purple-haired muscular person was hauling sacks of flour around in front of the entrance to the mill. When they saw Steve and Bucky approaching, they stopped and waved.

“You two must be the wanderers that offered to help us!” the person called. Judging by their young-ish appearance, they were likely the younger of the two bread mill workers. “Come on in! We’ll have a chat and then put you two to work.”

The inside of the mill was warm and brightly lit with wood rafters and scrap steel walls intertwining into a building crafted from both nature itself and the past of mankind. The creaking of the water wheel permeated every surface. 

An older man with salt-and-pepper hair sat up straight at his work table at the sound of Steve and Bucky’s footsteps echoing through the mill’s interior. The older man turned around, adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses, and gave Bucky only a cursory glance before squinting cautiously at Steve. 

Steve maintained steady eye contact back while wondering if the older man was old enough to remember the imagery of The Captain, humanity’s guiding shield, long before The Captain became a glorified politician and then an outlaw. Or perhaps there was yet another version of The Captain in this man’s head that Steve could only guess at. 

The purple-haired person set four cups of tea down on a table near the entrance, then invitingly pulled out wood stools from under the table. 

“Let’s introduce ourselves to each other over some tea!” they suggested. “Come on, sit next to me, Julian.”

The older man, who was apparently called Julian, sat next to the purple-haired person with a huff. Steve and Bucky naturally sat on the opposite side of the table, their large bulky bodies and long legs comically oversized for a table likely meant to seat two at most. They were pressed flush to each other with their hands knocking against each other’s when they reached in tandem for their cups of tea. 

Bucky took a cup of tea in his hands and studied it, then wafted the steam towards himself for a sniff. After a split second of consideration, he nudged Steve’s thigh with his own underneath the table to indicate that the tea was safe. 

Steve sipped the tea and found that it was steamy and hot with a distinct earthy yet sweet flavor. He drank until the cup was half-empty and set it down in front of him. 

“I’m Casey,” the purple-haired person said with a little wave. “My partner here is Julian. What are your guys’s names?”

“I’m Steve, and my husband here is Bucky,” Steve said, gesturing at himself and then at Bucky. “But you might know us by other names.”

“Oh, you’re not hard to recognize,” Julian growled, smacking his lips together. “I would’ve punched you two in the face if Casey hadn’t brought you in here.”

“I take it that you guys are kinda like us now,” Casey said, pressing a hand to Julian’s forearm. “You wouldn’t be all the way out here if you were still loyal to Neo Columbia.”

Julian turned to Casey, visibly calmer yet still agitated. “Casey, there’ve been rumors that they’ve been building a second one out west. They could be infiltrators or scouts,” he insisted. “Let me have a go at them.”

Surprise jolted through Steve. A second Neo Columbia? He hadn’t heard of nor seen any preliminary plans for one before the fiftieth anniversary gala. How much had changed in the months after his and Bucky’s escape?

Casey squeezed Julian’s forearm. “Let them tell their side of the story first. There must be a reason why they’re trading their services for food and shelter this far out in the wilderness.”

Steve gave a basic explanation of the recent events leading up to his and Bucky’s exile from Neo Columbia as well as the months they’d spent on the road helping Resistance-allied settlements up to that point. He didn’t reveal anything too sensitive or personal, but he said enough that Julian and Casey were nodding their heads agreeably -- albeit begrudgingly in Julian’s case -- when he finished explaining.

“I see, I see,” Casey said. “You guys are really doing good for the world. You’re kind of like wandering mercenaries renting out their services in service of good, worthy causes all over.”  
  
“Real fortunate that you two stopped by here on your way,” Julian added, his tone somewhere between an insult and a compliment. 

“What about you guys?” Bucky pressed. Julian and Casey turned toward him. He hadn’t spoken a word up until this point. “We heard from the townspeople that you arrived here from Neo Columbia several years ago. What brought you here?”

Casey bit their lip. “We were once architects who did contract work for the military and some kelp farm companies. Usual stuff. Then, we were recruited for a scouting trip to make plans for a new kelp farm situated in the mountains. Seemed like normal stuff, but when we got there we found out that there were people living where the kelp farm was gonna be built. And the military wasn’t planning on nicely asking them to leave, either.”  
  
Casey paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and then continued. “We didn’t know what to do back then. We could’ve found a more suitable uninhabited location, but we were more concerned about getting reprimanded by our superiors than about helping those people. We ended up standing by and watching helplessly as these innocent people were moved out of the way by force. After that, we couldn’t live with the guilt of helping a system that could murder so many people in cold blood.”

“We hijacked a higher-up’s personal hovermobile, inputted a set of random coordinates, and ended up here by chance,” Julian added. “That random chance was the best blessing in disguise in our entire lives. This place is our forever home now.”

“It sure is,” Casey agreed. “We do know that it is a little small compared to the towering luxury of the city. But we really wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Julian grunted in agreement. “Most of our younger folks have left for the larger settlements, you see. There’s more opportunity there, more people to meet, more things to do. There’s little left around here as a result. But us old folks, we have to make do with what we already have. We’ll reside along this darn river until our dying days.”

“It is a nice river,” Bucky said, completely straight-faced. Sometimes Steve thought that Bucky should’ve become the politician and not him. 

Julian leaned forward with his elbows on the table, baring his crooked teeth in either a smile or a grimace. “We haven’t had any fresh hands help us out recently around here. With muscles like those, however, we could…”

The words left Steve’s mouth instantly. “We’ll do whatever you need us to do.”

As it turned out, Casey had two different tasks in mind for Steve and Bucky. Steve was relegated to the basement where there were around a hundred sacks of processed flour that needed to be carried into town and exchanged for fuel, food, and hair dye. Upstairs, Julian and Bucky were hard at work repairing a mechanical loom that had just recently broken down. 

Steve began helping Casey load sacks of flour onto a cart that they would then pull across the bridge into the nearby settlement where Steve and Bucky were staying for the next few nights. They would likely have to make several trips back and forth to deliver all the flour before nightfall. 

“I think that conversation is the best oil for gears that are hard at work,” Casey said upon finishing loading the first load of flour, skin heavy with perspiration. “Mind telling me more about yourself? And that doesn’t mean telling me about The Captain or Captain America or any of that extra stuff. _Yourself._ ” 

Steve began telling Casey a series of stories. Unlike the stories he had told Aisha, however, the stories he told Casey were all about the everyday moments he’d treasured over the years. He went from his childhood days living in a leaky Brooklyn tenement all the way to the happiness he’d shared with Bucky within Neo Columbia’s walls. He made Casey laugh with stories about the antics of the Avengers in the early twenty-first century and turned the atmosphere momentarily sober with his stories about saying goodbye to all of his old friends one by one. 

By the time Steve caught up to the present day, there were no more sacks of flour remaining and the sun had long set behind the distant mountains.

Casey squeezed Steve’s arm. “Sounds like you’re going through a lot. But you’ll get through it. You’ve lived for this long, so there’s no way anything will stop you now.”

“Thank you for believing in me,” Steve replied automatically, though he really meant it. He’d remember Casey’s sincerity as motivation to continue on his cross-country journey with Bucky.

Casey tapped a finger to their chin. “You sorta remind me of this other guy I met a year ago or so. He stopped and chatted with us for a while on his way west. He gave us some coordinates in case we ever wanted to move away from this place and then left. Bruce, I think his name was?” 

Those last words stopped Steve in his tracks. 

“Bruce?” he asked, voice small.

“Yeah, Bruce,” Casey confirmed. “Weird guy. Didn’t seem like he was from around here. He acted a lot older than he looked, too. Oh, do you know him?”

* * *

The path to Bruce’s coordinates on the Pacific Coast would be long and arduous, considering the rough terrain and limited resources along the way. But if Bruce’s lab was really located at those coordinates, then the trip would be entirely worthwhile. 

The first leg of the journey was rather uneventful, all things considered. Steve and Bucky camped out under the stars in the rocky desert on most nights, as they tried to cover as much ground as possible every day instead of simply traveling from one Resistance-affiliated settlement to another per day. They would make a planned stop at the Grand Canyon along the way and rest for a few days before making a push across the desert and hopefully reaching Bruce’s coordinates before they ran out of carbo-fuel. 

When they finally arrived at the landmark they hadn’t seen in nearly a century, surprisingly little had changed. Considering the drastic changes that had occurred across the continent, Steve had half-expected that the view would’ve entirely changed by now, but instead he was greeted by the same vivid painted rocks that he remembered from countless past trips. 

It was here above his and Bucky’s favorite view in the entire world that Steve finally said the words he’d always wanted to say.

“We can’t leave things unsaid forever.”

Bucky looked at him. “Those words have never meant anything good. Not in comic books, not in movies, and definitely not coming out of your mouth.”

Steve huffed. “I’m serious, Buck. We can’t keep charging forward like this without a plan forever. We all have to deal with the past eventually.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Where’s the Steven Grant Rogers I’ve known since childhood and what have you done to him?”

“He’s on an extended sabbatical at the Grand Canyon right now,” Steve replied with a tinge of mirth to his voice. “Maybe he’s reflecting on his past mistakes, thinking about what he’s gonna do in the future, changing himself for the better.”

“That sounds like somethin’ Tony would’ve said about himself at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting way back when.” Bucky chuckled. 

Tony. The Avengers. _Bruce_.

Bucky’s expression sobered around the same time Steve’s did. Steve leaned back and took a deep breath of crisp mountain air. 

“We need to talk about the future. About our plans. About Bruce.”

Bucky placed his hand over Steve’s. “Steve, I’m also wondering about the hows and whys of all that. But if you’re looking at me for a definitive answer, I don’t have one. I’m in the dark just as much as you are.”

Steve curled and uncurled the fingers of his other hand. He leaned closer to Bucky. “Both Casey and Aisha described Bruce as this lone wanderer with no apparent ties or obligations. Other than that, Casey’s description of his appearance matches his pre-Migration appearance nearly perfectly. But he should’ve been with Greater Humanity when he came back. What happened?”

That all-important question hung in the art between them. Neither of them wanted to assume the worst, not after they’d found new hope for humanity out in the populated so-called wastelands. But with their current limited information, their best guess was that some calamity had led Bruce to return to Earth.

But if some disaster had befallen Greater Humanity, then why had Bruce holed himself away in a lab on the Pacific Coast instead of seeking help from the Ymir Federation through official channels? And his topographical maps were far more comprehensive and advanced than any maps in use by either the Aegis Project or the Ymir Federation, so he could’ve made contact with Neo Columbia upon his arrival. 

And yet, Steve and Bucky had only learned of his presence through a series of chance encounters. Years had gone by without Bruce even attempting to make his presence known to the people who could’ve helped him. None of it added up.

“We can’t answer that right now,” Bucky decided after a moment. “That’s what we’ll ask Bruce about as soon as we meet up with him at his coordinates. But after we find him, what will we do?”

“Casey heard a rumor that a second North American Aegis Project settlement is under construction on the Pacific Coast. Let’s investigate that,” Steve suggested. “And after we investigate, we’re taking the good fight straight to the higher-ups.”

“The settlements we’ve visited have all been underdeveloped,” Bucky said plainly. “There’s not much we can rely on in terms of firepower if we were to charge into Neo Columbia guns blazing. Even if Bruce has the fanciest space tech imaginable, there’s only three of us against all of them.” 

“Then there must be something else we can do, Buck,” Steve insisted. 

“Whatever that something is, I don’t know what it is,” Bucky said. “We’re not top of the line super soldiers anymore compared to what the future has, Steve. We can fight for ourselves, sure, but trying to overthrow a stable modern government would be a vast overestimation of our abilities.”

Steve opened and closed his mouth several times, unable to rebut Bucky’s words. 

“You’re probably right,” Steve finally admitted. 

Bucky snorted. “Is there anyone else on this godforsaken planet that you’d say that to?”

“But even then,” Steve continued, a half-suppressed smile tugging at his lips. “I can’t imagine anymore that we could settle down somewhere like Casey and Julian did. Our future isn’t making a homestead out on the prairie and turning a blind eye to injustice. There’s too many people out there who need our help.” 

“As much as I would’ve enjoyed tending goats in Wakanda for the rest of my life, the fight always seems to find men like us eventually.” Bucky sighed. “And the serum made sure that we’ll keep on fighting every single fight to be found until the goddamn eventual heat death of the universe.”

Steve didn’t have anything additional to say about what were essentially the facts of his and Bucky’s shared existence at this point. A natural moment of silence passed between them.

“I’ve been thinking about this on the road,” Steve mused. “I did everything I could as The Captain for the little guy. Even as I felt myself fading into political obscurity, even as the middle ground grew more and more extreme, I continued on the same path until I finally had to choose between you and the job. But now, I don’t know if any of what I did was right. I don’t know if any of what I want to do now is right either. Nothing I do feels certain anymore.”

Bucky adjusted himself so that he could wrap his arms around Steve, running his fingers comfortingly along Steve’s shoulders. Steve melted into the warmth of Bucky’s torso, letting his husband support him like he always had.

“Whatever you decide to do, Stevie, I’m always at your six,” Bucky murmured into Steve’s scalp. “Even if I don’t always agree with your choices, you’ve always had a good heart and a stubborn-ass head. That’s what I’ve always loved about you. And I’ll keep loving you until the end of the goddamn line. Here’s to another three hundred years.”

* * *

That night, Steve looked up at the dazzling starry sky stretching above the Grand Canyon. He wondered if the Ymir was drifting along idly in low orbit somewhere among the stars as her insides were slowly emptied out by the Aegis Project’s resettlement ambitions. Perhaps somewhere else in the night sky the spaceships of Greater Humanity were looking at their own starry skies imagining that Earth and its sun was somewhere among them. That was, if they hadn’t already fallen to whatever disaster led Bruce to return to Earth.

Steve curled closer to Bucky, who was already snoozing peacefully under the warm blankets after a long day of driving and a hearty dinner of rations. Whatever Steve did, Bucky was his moral compass in a way. If loving Bucky wasn’t right, then nothing was right with the world and Steve would do his darndest to change that. He knew that Bucky felt much the same way about him in return and took reassurance in the eventuality that they’d always push each other onto the right path forward. 

“Happy three hundred years,” he said to himself.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A distress signal brings Steve and Bucky out into the desert, and everything comes full circle.

Bucky shook Steve awake. His eyes were wide and alert even as his voice remained even.

“We need to get moving. Now.”

Steve rose, fully awake in an instant. He folded the blankets and placed them in the knapsacks. On the other side of their little camp, Bucky covered up any signs of the previous night’s campfire. The tension in his muscles was evident even as he went through the motions of his usual morning routine. There was something he wasn’t telling Steve.

“Is everything alright, Buck?” 

“There was a distress signal sent to our hovercycle,” Bucky said. He creased his lips. “The signal originated from one of the Resistance-affiliated settlements in the region, but it’s on a strange frequency.”   
  
“If there’s any chance that there’s someone in danger, we have to go help--” Steve said before Bucky held up his hand to stop him.

“There’s two more things. While most of the signal was indecipherable, it clearly mentioned an attack from a large group of Neo Columbian soldiers. They’re clearly not an ordinary border patrol, either. The soldiers are a powerful type that aren’t recorded in the Resistance’s database.”

Steve froze for a split second. He’d estimated from Julian and Casey’s knowledge of the region that the rumored second Aegis Project settlement was nearly five hundred miles north of their current latitude somewhere along the Northwestern Pacific Coast. According to that estimate, there shouldn’t have been any Neo Columbian patrols along the route to Bruce’s coordinates. Had that estimate been completely off, or had he and Bucky unwittingly stepped right into a trap laid for them?

“We still have to go investigate,” Steve said at the same time as Bucky said, “We shouldn’t risk it”.

Steve crossed his arms while Bucky put his hands on his hips. They stared hard at each other. 

“I know that look. I can tell you’re not gonna let me talk you out of this,” Bucky said. “But I’m damn well trying.” 

“Buck, look. There’s no way that Neo Columbia would send a single armed scouting party to attack a single settlement with no intention of attacking again. Even if we take a detour and avoid the distress signal, we’re gonna run into a patrol sooner or later. When we’re on the road, they’ll have the advantage of surprise over us. But if we attack them on predictable terrain and potentially with help on our side, we’ll have better chances of winning.” 

For a few seconds, Bucky still didn’t budge. Then, he finally let his hands fall to his sides with a sigh. “Can’t argue that you at least have things planned out. That’s more than you could say for most of your dumb decisions. Hand me the ammunition, would you?”

The ride to the settlement that was under attack was quick and uneventful, giving Steve and Bucky a brief window of time to steel themselves for the upcoming fight. 

Upon exiting the dense evergreen forest ringing the Canyon, the settlement was in sight. There were several heavily armored military hovermobiles printed with Neo Columbian star sigils idling in front of the settlement’s front gates while flames burned bright from charred buildings behind them. Soldiers in unfamiliar dark uniforms emblazoned with stars crouched on and around the military hovermobiles.

Steve raised his hologram shield with a flick of his wrist, extending his physical scrap vibranium shield underneath the hologram with another. Bucky readied his rifle. The Neo Columbian scouting party would sight them in three, two, one…

Bullets ricocheted off of the hovercycle’s fender. Bucky returned fire, shattering the hologram windows of the parked hovermobiles and sending several soldiers scrambling for cover. Still, most of the strange-looking Neo Columbian soldiers remained undeterred in their offense. 

As the hovercycle drew closer to the perimeter, the Neo Columbian soldiers’ marksmanship became increasingly accurate. Their bullets now ricocheted off of Steve’s shield and whizzed past his head, though none hit their mark yet. 

Several hundred feet away from the line of military hovermobiles, Steve abruptly pulled the hovercycle to a stop with the loud roar of the pressurized engines and jumped off. He broke into a run as soon as his boots touched the ground. Bullets kicked up dust around his feet as he ran toward the soldiers. 

Behind him, Bucky’s rifle barked as he exchanged fire with the remaining soldiers while crouching behind the hovercycle as a makeshift barrier. The remaining soldiers closest to Steve were all picked off one by one, giving Steve an opening to lob a grenade through the window of the nearest hovermobile. He braced himself behind his shield as the hovermobile became a ball of flame and debris. 

Neo Columbian soldiers scattered away from the explosion with surprised shouts, fingers slipping from the triggers of their semi-automatics. Steve threw his scrap vibranium shield in a calculated arc with a flick of his forearm. The shield sliced cleanly through several soldiers before returning to its wristwatch mount with a satisfying click. 

Having dispatched the soldiers on this end of the perimeter, Steve pivoted around and sprinted toward the other end while readying another grenade in his hand. 

This time, the soldiers caught on to Steve’s plan. They scattered away from the parked military hovermobiles and fired at Steve from all directions.

Steve recalibrated. Instead of throwing the grenade into a hovermobile, he threw it at the advancing soldiers, instantly vaporizing a good chunk of them. Even after the grenade blast consumed their squadron-mates in flames, several soldiers remained standing. They charged toward Steve with their semi-automatics raised. Before they could get any closer, Bucky shot them through the heads, sending them collapsing bonelessly to the ground one by one. 

For a moment, the only sound heard across the desert was the crackling of the flames consuming the settlement buildings ahead. Steve took a deep breath and got his bearings. He made eye contact with Bucky who was camped out on the other side of the front gate with someone else’s blood splattered across his chest. There were still no signs of any Resistance members or civilian survivors anywhere to be found.

Before Steve or Bucky could move, more Neo Columbian soldiers rushed out from the settlement’s front gate. These soldiers moved with ease and practice, surrounding Steve on all sides in an instant. Half held assault rifles and electric guns in their arms while the other half were apparently unarmed. 

“Stand down,” one of the soldiers said. “You’ll make things a lot easier for us if you do, Captain.”

Steve narrowed his eyes. Those words didn’t sound automated or scripted. And although the soldiers’ faces were obscured by helmets, their bodies were far more distinct and varied than those of mass-production grunts but less mechanical than those of high-ranking officials. Who were these soldiers?

Before Steve could respond with a snarky comment, one of the soldiers collapsed to the ground with a hole in his neck. No more words were exchanged. 

The armed soldiers split off from the main group and ran towards Bucky with the roar of a dozen rifles firing at once. The remaining unarmed soldiers charged at Steve with a flurry of fists.

Steve deflected the onslaught of blows with his shield and forearms in tandem. He then bashed one soldier over the head with his shield and swept another’s feet out from under him with a low sweep. 

But just as Steve thought he was gaining the upper hand, the soldiers didn’t stay down. They rose to their feet again and traded blows with Steve. Several of them managed to get in hard hits on Steve’s shoulders and gut, sending him reeling. Steve only barely managed to get a few blows in against his assailants before he was being held in a chokehold and his shield was wrenched out of his hands by a strong grip.

Steve had badly underestimated the soldiers. These weren’t the automated reanimated corpses who comprised Neo Columbia’s grunt soldiers. They were wholly sentient soldiers with considerable force behind each and every blow, not to mention the augmentations running through their bodies.

While Steve had fought enemies far stronger than himself in the past -- Thanos came to mind -- he hadn’t fought any enemies who were his exact physical match ever since his first encounter with the Winter Soldier on the highway two centuries ago. 

Realization dawned on him. Now that he had no voice in Neo Columbia’s governance, the legal protections barring military use of late twenty-first century super serum research had been lifted. These soldiers had replica serum flowing through their veins. He’d made a grave mistake by engaging them in hand-to-hand combat.

Just as Steve realized this, one of the soldiers jabbed an electric gun into his side point-blank and fired. Steve screamed, his vision blurring from shock as his limbs momentarily went limp. 

Before he knew it, weighted handcuffs were being roughly latched around his wrists. He kicked at his assailants and knocked his head backward, making several of the hands grabbing at him back away. 

“C’mon, help me restrain him!” one of the soldiers barked. 

More arms wrapped themselves around Steve, holding him in place while more restraints were secured around his arms and legs. No matter how hard he thrashed and kicked, he was sorely outnumbered and quickly losing consciousness. 

Steve was dragged in a half-conscious state into the burning settlement past wreckage and charred bodies. When the soldiers reached what looked to be a half-collapsed dwelling, he was tossed roughly onto the floor on his back, where he groaned and struggled to get to his knees. Several soldiers shoved Steve down and pinned him to the ground with the soles of their boots while he cursed and struggled against the restraints, muscles still stiff and twitching from the electric shock. 

Another group of soldiers dragged Bucky into the ruins, throwing him against the wall opposite to Steve. Despite the dark bullet wounds in Bucky’s shoulders and gut, he struggled madly as several soldiers pinned him down with their hands and boots. 

“What do you want with us, you bastards?” Bucky growled, teeth red with blood. 

“We have orders to take you and The Captain captive,” one of the soldiers said. “Doesn’t matter whether you two are dead or alive. Judging by what the top brass have planned for you two, you’ll both be dead soon enough.”

“You’ll pay for this,” Steve spat, straining against the boots pinning him down.

“That won’t happen,” the soldier with his foot on Steve’s chest said. “There are no survivors left in this settlement. We made sure of that just before you two arrived here. You and your traitorous husband wasted your lives on a lost cause.”

“No.” Steve gritted his teeth. “I don’t believe you.”

One of the soldiers laughed raucously. “Ha! Can you guys really believe that this is The Captain? He’s as much of a traitor as the other guy!”

“That’s what spending time with scum does to you,” another soldier said. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. He’ll see the truth for himself when he joins his little outsider friends in the afterlife. Let’s deal with the traitor first.”

“Old men,” one of the soldiers said disgustedly. “They’re both past their primes. How pathetic. It’s about time we put them out of their misery.”

The soldiers laughed and jeered. Steve could no longer make out what they were saying. 

Footsteps echoed through the ground receding from Steve. They were approaching Bucky with their guns raised.

“No,” Steve said again, this time with desperation edging at his voice. 

When he strained against the boots pinning him down, one of the soldiers struck him across the face with a rifle stock, smashing his head into the concrete floor. Darkness edged at his vision.

Even while he was temporarily blinded and half-conscious, he could still hear the loud struggle between Bucky and the soldiers as Bucky managed to grapple with several of them using his vibranium arm and send them tumbling bonelessly to the ground. 

Then, several well-aimed shots and the revving of electric guns brought Bucky to his knees. Bucky’s scream of pain quickly became a series of agonized cries as the soldiers brought their weapons down on him. Steve cried with him, writhing in agony almost as if he could feel each and every blow dealt to Bucky as if it had been dealt to him instead. Even as Bucky went silent and ceased fighting back, the blows kept coming.

Strength and anger like a thousand scorching flames welled up in Steve’s body. His vision went red. Reality bent and twisted around him until all he could see was the exposed wiring and flesh his hands were ripping apart. 

He didn’t remember much of what he’d done to the soldiers after that. Either the serum or traumatic shock had turned those memories into a dark void -- he didn’t know which. Perhaps that was for the best in the end. He already had enough blood-soaked nightmares to last for another two hundred years. 

He only remembered coming back to his senses when he felt his shield slice through the neck of the last remaining soldier. He maintained a white-knuckled grip on his shield as he crouched in front of the soldier’s unmoving body, chest heaving from exertion and pain.

His vision slowly grew crisp and clear. He could feel blood running down his forearms onto his shield. As soon as he realized that he’d just murdered an entire squadron of serum-enhanced soldiers with his bare hands, a cold chill ran down his back. He suddenly remembered what had led up to this moment.

_ Bucky. Bucky. Bucky! _

Steve felt the impossible burst of strength melt from his body along with his rage. His body grew cold and heavy. With what little strength he could still muster, he staggered over to where Bucky laid unmoving in the rubble.

“Bucky. Bucky, oh God. I’m here now. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Steve babbled uncontrollably. “Please, God, hold on for me. Just a little longer and we’ll be safe, okay? It’ll all be okay.”

Just as Steve slung Bucky’s arm over his shoulder, however, he nearly collapsed to his knees from utter shock and exhaustion. He just barely maintained his balance with what little strength he had left so that Bucky wouldn’t fall to the ground with him. 

Steve refused to truly believe that this would be the end. But no matter how hard he tried to get up, he felt his muscles turn to jelly beneath him as deep, burning pain throbbed through his body. His chest heaved and trembled under Bucky’s dead weight. The fight had exacted its toll on him. 

His only option now was to remain still and recover enough strength to drag Bucky back to the hovercycle and treat Bucky’s wounds and then his own with what limited medical supplies they had on hand. Either that, or they would both eventually succumb to their wounds while wrapped around each other.

Deep down, Steve wouldn’t have minded either outcome. 

As luck would have it, Steve didn’t even have a minute to catch his breath or resign himself to his death before a horrifying sight unfolded before him. The squadron leader’s flesh began to distend, bulging outward as if giving postmortem birth. The bulge squirmed and strained against the outer layer of skin before bursting free in an outpouring of dark blood. 

A hologram projector emerged from the squadron leader’s now gaping back, lens slick with unidentifiable fluid. The lens shot out a beam of light that then formed into a humanoid hologram. Of all the people to greet him at his lowest...

“President Salva,” Steve said, a dark chuckle edging at his voice. “Didn’t expect to see you come all the way out here to see us. Enjoying the Pacific Coast?”

“Captain Rogers,” she said, curling her plasticy lips into a smile. “You’ve certainly seen better days. And I would ask the same of you, but you did not extend these idle pleasantries to the loyal men you have just dispatched with your own hands. I will have you know that the serum we administered to them took quite the effort from our finest scientists to extract from your genetic samples in your absence. You have made many things far more difficult than they need be.”

As the life-size communication hologram standing before Steve, President Salva was dressed in a large billowing golden dress with folds protruding from her back that resembled the sun’s rays. Finely crafted jewelry glistened around her neck and forearms, and luminescent panels installed in her body glowed beneath her clothing. Her appearance starkly contrasted with the desolate charred ruins of an entire village looming behind her.

“You seem a little disappointed in us,” Steve replied, deadpan. “What do you want?” 

President Salva crossed her fingers together. “Oh, I am disappointed. But knowing you and the Sergeant, you would have caused trouble sooner or later. It was only a matter of time before you ran from a system that was never meant for your idealism.”

“That system criminalized a good man for the grave crime of doing what was best for his city and nation,” Steve scathingly said. “That system performed horrible experiments on countless vulnerable people. That system destroyed innocent lives for the purpose of reckless greed-fueled expansionism.” 

“Captain Rogers. Do you really believe that there is any future for humanity outside of Neo Columbia?” President Salva spread her arms apart. “Look at the world around you. The heathen settlements live in ignorance while our citizens live long, happy lives. Think about it. If you hadn’t blindly followed your traitorous husband into the wastelands, you wouldn’t be bleeding out in a disgusting hovel filled with the dead right now. You’d be safe at home in a city that would still adore and praise you.” 

“And that would make me complacent in a system that valued progress over the value of life itself.” Steve began to drag himself towards the hologram despite every muscle in his body screaming at him to stop and rest. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t break that hologram projector in half right this moment.”

“Not so fast, Captain.” President Salva held out her palm. “I have an offer on the table for you. Weren’t you always open to peaceful negotiations? Or have the heathens turned our noble Captain into a violent brute?” 

“The Captain is the one who prefers the peaceful option. When that fails, Steve Rogers steps in and fights for the little guy.” Blood began leaking from between Steve’s lips. “Go on. Make your offer. I have all the time in the world.” 

President Salva’s smile turned into a smirk.

“Look at the dreadful state you’re in. You likely won’t survive the hour without medical aid, much less your poor husband. Your only option for survival is to give yourself and your husband up to us. Upon your surrender, you will both receive the finest medical treatment that our glorious military has to offer. We will then judge you fairly for your treason against Neo Columbia -- or as fairly as we can after all the crimes you have both committed. When the trial is over, we will give you both neural implants and reintegrate you into society.”

“That seems awfully forgiving of you,” Steve said. He wasn’t buying it.

President Salva’s smile widened. She either didn’t catch on to Steve’s sarcasm or she was simply choosing to ignore it. “Yes, it is. You will not become androids or reanimated corpses; that would only diminish your usefulness to us. No, you will become loyal soldiers of your own accord and live for two hundred more years while spreading Neo Columbian glory around the entire world. Accept our generous offer, and you will no longer have any guilt or regret. Turn us down, and you will face unimaginable pain for the few hours remaining in your life. Do you accept, Captain?”

The Senators and President Salva had never truly known Steven Grant Rogers if they thought that an offer like that could sway him. 

Steve set his jaw. “I don’t think I will.”

The hologram began fizzling out. The battery in the device was on the brink of death. President Salva must have expected a quick and easy answer all along.

“So you refuse,” President Salva said, her voice quickly growing clouded with static. “Then you will die of your wounds alone in the wastelands. How unbecoming of a national hero.”

Steve held his head high. “I’m not alone. I have Bucky with me.”

“The Juliet to your Romeo, hm? How pitiful,” President Salva laughed. “Then enjoy your last moments with a traitor by your side, Rogers.”

As soon as the hologram finally dissipated, Steve slowly lowered himself to his knees, carrying Bucky’s unconscious body with him. He could feel darkness encroaching on his vision.   
  
“This might be it, Buck,” Steve said quietly. Bucky didn’t respond. “Seems like a strange place to finally call it a good two hundred years, I know, but we’ve pushed ourselves enough.”

_ As long as I’m with you, everything will be okay.  _

Engines roared in the distance. Steve let his eyelashes brush against his cheekbones. 

In what felt like a split second, unfamiliar hands were gently grabbing his shoulders and pulling him back to consciousness. 

He was now propped up against the side of a rusted hovertruck with Bucky slouched next to him still unconscious and taking near-imperceptible rapid breaths. Steve’s wounds had been hastily dressed to stem the bleeding and stymie infection. The cloaked fighters -- Resistance -- were now moving on to treating Bucky’s wounds, though they shot cold glances at Steve when he futilely tried to move.

As the Resistance fighters removed Bucky’s bloodsoaked body armor, they took Aisha’s emblem out of one of the storage compartments on Bucky’s harness. As soon as they saw the inscription, their attitudes markedly changed, regarding Steve and Bucky with curious but unguarded eyes. 

A cloaked man knelt down in front of Steve so that they were eye to eye.

“I’m Shoaib,” the cloaked man said. “As soon as I saw that emblem, I knew who you were, Captain. My medics will do what we can for you and your partner.”

“What were you planning on doing with us before you saw the emblem?” Steve asked between labored breaths and grunts of pain. 

Shoaib smiled humorlessly. “Keeping you just stable enough to answer our questions. But do not worry. There is no need for that now. We will not judge you for your past ignorance.”

Steve had one more pressing question on his mind. “Why did you come?”

“We received the same distress signal, so we came here to look for survivors,” Shoaib replied. “When we arrived, we searched the entire settlement, but we only found you and your partner still alive. It’s miraculous that you two survived at all.”

Steve inhaled shakily. So that Neo Columbian soldier hadn’t been bluffing. He and Bucky had arrived too late.

“Do not hold undue guilt over this loss, Captain,” Shoaib said as if reading Steve’s mind. “We do not value your life any less for failing to prevent a disaster not of your own direct making.”

Now that Steve had no more questions to ask, Shoaib quickly got to work. He and a handful of the other medics tore away Steve’s body armor to administer treatments to his wounds while another team of medics worked on stabilizing Bucky next to him.

Steve nearly blacked out several times during the treatment. He only barely remained conscious by forcing his eyes open in the rare moments where the pain of the procedures being performed on his body briefly subsided. 

He finally near-fully came back to himself when Shoaib and the one remaining medic were passing strange glowing devices over a scabbing wound in Steve’s side. The rest of the medics had moved on to treating Bucky’s wounds. The sun was still high in the sky above. 

A fog seemed to have been lifted from Steve’s senses. He flexed his fingers, then his toes. There was just a low, throbbing pain throughout his body reminding of his injuries, as if the serum had been at work for several days -- but only a few hours seemed to have passed. 

“We received this medical technology from a man named Bruce near the ocean,” Shoaib said when he saw Steve staring at the glowing device in his hand. “I haven’t yet figured out what makes it work, but it has performed many medical miracles for our people.”

“Bruce helped you guys out, huh,” Steve mumbled hoarsely. “I’ll thank him for indirectly saving my ass later.”

Shoaib looked mildly surprised. “You already know of Bruce?”

“You could say that,” Steve replied. It was an understatement, sure, but it was true nonetheless.

“Then you should know that he should be able to save your husband as long as you know the way to his lab.” Shoaib began packing up his supplies and tools. “We cannot accompany you for the entire route, but we will promise you that he is your one remaining hope.” 

* * *

After a few hours of rest, Steve had recovered enough strength that he could drive the hovercycle without doubling over in pain. However, despite Shoaib and the medics’ best efforts, Bucky’s wounds were still severe enough that he remained unconscious, his serum placing him in a catatonic state in a desperate bid at keeping him alive. 

Shoaib and the medics could only escort the hovercycle until dusk, at which point they had to return to their own settlement and let Steve complete the rest of the journey to the Pacific Coast alone. Steve sincerely thanked them for saving his and likely Bucky’s lives before continuing driving across the barren southwestern desert alone except for Bucky’s unconscious form strapped into the back seat. 

Soon, Steve’s wounds began knitting themselves back together underneath his tattered body armor. Bucky sagged against his back, breath shallow, neither worsening or improving. He still didn’t regain consciousness even after hours of rest.

Steve already knew that while Bucky was still one of the best snipers and human combatants on the planet even in the current century, there was very little of the indomitable twentieth century Winter Soldier left in him. He was entirely James Buchanan Barnes, a bicentenarian who always did what he thought was right no matter what. 

While that meant that he felt little of HYDRA’s influence on him in the current day, thankfully, that also meant that he couldn’t shrug off near-mortal wounds like he could when he had some of the Winter Soldier left in him. That meant that the serum would slow his bodily functions and force him into a coma while he slowly recovered, as had happened several times in the past. And just as he’d recovered in those instances, he would recover again so long as he kept breathing.

At least, that’s the mantra that Steve repeated to himself over and over again in the early silent hours of the morning. But even then, his burgeoning anxieties gradually filled his entire mind. He didn’t know if he would reach Bruce in time, if Bruce was still located at those Pacific Coast coordinates at all. 

And even then, any number of obstacles could appear along the way. This could even include the unknown limits of the serum itself, as no tests had been conducted recently on his and Bucky’s physical limits, only on their normal health parameters and potential full lifespans. As a result, they had previously managed the amount of strain they placed on their bodies by avoiding physical conflicts and staggering their travel time as much as possible. 

That also meant that even though they’d both survived death so many times and for so long, there was still the ever-present possibility that this brush with death would be the last. And no matter how many times he reassured himself that everything would be okay, that worry still lingered. 

But even with the situation as bad as it was, Steve refused to seriously entertain the possibility of Bucky’s death. He’d mourned for Bucky far too many times in the past and had no intention of mourning him again. There was no world Steve could live in without him after hundreds of years of defining his home as wherever Bucky was. 

Day blended into night into day. Steve took only brief breaks to hydrate, refuel, and nibble at dry rations before checking Bucky’s vitals and heading out onto the road at a breakneck pace once more. At some point, his fingers began trembling from strain, but he only tightened his grip and pushed onward. 

Around here, his memories of the journey grew foggy again. He remembered finally stopping at a settlement at some point and closing his eyes for a fitful half-hour with his arms wrapped around Bucky. He then tiredly accepted the limited medical help that the local medics offered and took the opportunity to show them Bruce’s coordinates and ask them a few questions.

Several hours later, Steve brought the hovercycle to a stop at the edge of a misty wood and dismounted, his boots sinking slightly into the mulch underfoot. According to the medics at that settlement, the building at Bruce’s given coordinates was apparently a long-abandoned military base hidden deep in the Pacific coast woods. Local rumor had it that a monster lived here that would sometimes uproot trees and dig deep tracks into the ground with its large claws.

Steve gently hoisted Bucky over his shoulders and trekked into the mist-laden woods, making sure not to jostle Bucky’s barely healed wounds too much as he did so. The soft, warm puff of Bucky’s breaths against Steve’s neck was his one reassurance that Bucky wouldn’t succumb right before the finish line. 

For a mile, there were no signs of human life anywhere. There was only mud, the occasional pile of unidentifiable debris, and dark evergreens reaching up toward a grey sky overhead. Then, an industrial-looking wall reinforced with strange glowing metals began to loom dark in the mist. Standing in front of that wall was an aged scientist in a lab coat pointing a strange-looking gun at Steve’s face.

“Bruce?” Steve said, barely believing his eyes. “Is that really you?” 

The strange-looking gun fell out of Bruce’s hands. “Steve?” 

Steve stepped closer. He could now see the expression of shock and alarm on Bruce’s face. “Please help us. Please. I don’t know how much longer Bucky has without your help.”

Bruce tried his best to smile. “Don’t worry about it, man. I’ll treat James before I ask you about the past hundred years or where you put that one spicy nachos recipe.”

That was Bruce’s attempt at lightening the mood. Despite the gnawing worry in his gut and the sweat and grime caking his face, Steve still managed a smile in return. He hadn’t realized how much he’d really missed Bruce up until that moment. 

Bruce produced a small device out of his coat pocket and fiddled with it. Immediately, the wall’s gates receded into the ground, leaving a clear path into a drab military compound. The compound’s infirmary had been partially converted into Bruce’s lab space but still contained an operating table and a few cots stocked with freshly made linens. Steve gently laid Bucky down on the operating table and only reluctantly moved away once Bruce finished changing into sterile scrubs.

“Normally, I’d talk to you about the extent of James’s injuries and ask you a few questions because you’re his husband and my friend,” Bruce said. “But you should probably get some rest in the barracks first. I know you’ll pace back and forth until you dig a trail through the carpet, so here’s something that I’ve been told way too many times that might help: Everything will be okay when you wake up.”

Steve opened and closed his mouth. Some part of him wanted to argue with Bruce, but deep down he knew that Bruce’s judgement was correct. Now that his body was no longer single mindedly focused on the imperative of saving Bucky, the exhaustion of sleepless nights and ceaseless days was sinking into his bones.

He settled instead on taking Bucky’s limp hand in his own and entwining their fingers together. “Did you hear that, Buck? The doc says everything will be okay. Sounds swell, right?”

Bucky didn’t stir, though his heartbeat was still firm through the skin of his palm. Steve pressed a kiss to Bucky’s knuckles and then reluctantly moved away so that Bruce could begin his medical treatment.

“You’ve gone through a lot with James,” Bruce said quietly as Steve began walking towards the infirmary door. “Thank you for keeping humanity safe for so long with each other. I just wish that I could’ve helped you two more along the way somehow.”

“It’s been a long few months,” Steve said. He wanted to say more, but his words caught in his throat. He paused for a moment next to the infirmary door, sensing that Bruce’s eyes were still on his back.

“I… yes, I think you guys have gone through a lot,” Bruce said, wrapping his fingers together and then unwrapping them again. “At least, that’s what it looks like.”

“It looks like you’ve gone through a lot too,” Steve replied, his eyes drawn to Bruce’s head of white hair and the unfamiliar wrinkles on his face. So many things were unfamiliar about this new Bruce that Steve didn’t even know where to begin with understanding it all. His hands began to shake again.

“Get some rest,” Bruce repeated. “Everything will be okay. Don’t worry about it.”

An awkward bout of silence followed. There was so much Steve still wanted to say, but he couldn’t find the willpower to either say something or leave. Bruce shuffled his feet back and forth, clearly divided between waiting for Steve to say something and attending to Bucky’s injuries as quickly as possible.

“See you in the morning, Bruce,” Steve finally said, turning away. “Thank you for helping us.”

He then closed the infirmary door behind him, not knowing what else he could say to a man he hadn’t seen for over a century.

* * *

Steve woke with the amber light of afternoon filtering through the nearby window. When he rolled over with a weary groan, he suddenly realized that his wounds had all almost completely healed themselves in his sleep. He could smell the faint aroma of warm food somewhere in the barracks.

“Can I come in?” Bruce’s faint voice asked from the other side of the privacy curtain. “I have food.”

“I’m up,” Steve said, his voice scratchy and dry at the edges. “Come on in.”

Bruce still acted as if he needed permission even when Steve was the visitor and not him. That awkwardness made him recognizable as the Bruce Steve once knew, despite his snow-white hair and wrinkles. 

“You’re up earlier than I expected,” Bruce said, brushing the privacy curtain aside. He held a compostable tray of steaming hot food in his hands. “It’s been just over twenty-four hours since you got here. How’re you feeling?”

“How’s Bucky doing?” Steve asked, shifting so that he was sitting up against the stack of pillows at his back. He took the tray of food from Bruce’s hands and took a moment to appreciate the steam and warm aromas wafting off of the dishes while he gulped down the included cup of water. His stomach audibly growled.

“He’s making a speedy recovery in the infirmary right now. He should awaken later today if everything goes as planned.” Bruce pulled up a folding chair. “Mind if I eat with you?”

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead,” Steve said with a nod. 

Bruce walked to the other side of the barracks and returned with an identical tray of hot food in his hands. He gingerly set his tray down on the bed next to Steve’s covered legs, and only began to eat after Steve had taken his first bite of food. 

“Hey, this tastes pretty good,” Steve said after swallowing. “Did you really make this?”

“I had a cooking android help me,” Bruce said, scratching sheepishly at the back of his neck. “But I did at least forty percent of the prep work.”

“That’s pretty impressive,” Steve said, remembering the number of times that Bruce had burned or ruined egg omelettes back in both the Avengers Tower and the New Avengers Facility.

They fell into silence after that. Steve finished his perfectly seasoned mashed potatoes and moved on to the savory pork slices. 

“I have a few questions I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Bruce said.

“Hit me,” Steve replied. 

Bruce pressed his fingertips together. “What the hell happened while I was gone?”

Steve took a deep breath. “A helluva lot. You want the long version or the short version?”

“Long version.” Bruce adjusted his glasses. “Give me the full lecture, Professor Rogers.”

Steve told Bruce about everything -- the ups, the downs, the pain, the joy, all of it. He didn’t gloss over the institutional failures of Neo Columbia or the suffering of the people left behind in the wastelands, but he didn’t leave out the individual happiness he and Bucky had enjoyed in an era relatively free of conflict. By the time he reached his confrontation with President Salva in the destroyed settlement, the automatic lights kept the dark night at bay and the food on his tray had long since grown cold.

“That was a ‘helluva lot’,” Bruce remarked. “I’m glad you’re still here, Steve. I don’t know what else to say to all that. Sorry.”

“No need to say anything. What’s your next question?” Steve asked. 

Bruce shrugged. “Well, you kinda just answered all of the questions I had in mind, so let’s change things around. Do you have any questions for me?”

“Of course I do,” Steve said. “You ready?”

“Hit me,” Bruce replied. “But don’t actually do that. The big guy’s kinda sensitive.”

Steve chuckled. “Oh, I definitely won’t. Actually, I’ll even do you one better: What the hell happened to  _ you _ , Bruce?”

“That’s a long story as well,” Bruce said. “You mind if I give you the Cliff’s Notes for now?”

“Go ahead,” Steve said, taking a bite of cold refried beans. 

“Ten years after we set out, we settled on a planet with an environment mirroring Earth’s and terraformed it to suit our needs. We named it Elysium, built some cities with well-maintained housing for everyone, cultivated some crops and animals for everyone to eat. Everything went great for a while. Only thing was, there were issues with our communications equipment, so we couldn’t get back in contact with the Ymir Federation. Other than that, we had a pretty decent new life, all things considered.”

“What happened to the others?” Steve asked. “Why aren’t they with you?”

“Some stuff happened, so Thor took the Asgardians somewhere else. Carol is still charting all of Elysium’s topography as of now. And as for me, I came back on a diplomatic and research mission with a crew accompanying me, but we encountered unexpected difficulties along the way. I was the only one left when the ship landed somewhere in the  Yucatán Peninsula.”

Steve nodded. He could sense that there was a delicate story behind those words, so he didn’t press the issue.

“I set up the equipment and technology I could salvage and tried to get in contact with the Ymir Federation, but they were using a communication frequency I couldn’t imitate. So I took a trip across the continent to the giant tower you just told me was planted in the ground -- how did you even engineer that? -- and the soldiers at the door said that they were independent from the Ymir Federation, so I would be considered a hostile alien if I didn’t leave the area. So I left.”

Steve frowned. “I would’ve let you in if you’d given them your name and waited for me.” 

Bruce shook his head. “And risked those corpse soldiers opening a file on me and then hunting me down? No way. Besides, judging by what you told me about the Neo Columbian government, I don’t think they would’ve shown me much mercy if they’d found out that I had Greater Humanity weapons on me.”

“Or that you had replica serum in your veins,” Steve added. “They were quick to use the serum sequence to produce soldiers as soon as I couldn’t defend my own rights in court. Maybe it’s for the best that we took so long to find each other.”

“If I hadn’t left Neo Columbia, then you wouldn’t have had the map or the supplies that you and James used to get here,” Bruce pointed out. “I left all those supplies in that nuclear bunker and coded the security system so that it would allow you guys in there just in case. Besides that, without me the Resistance wouldn’t have had the medical technology that saved your lives. Took me several decades to build all that tech from scrap metal and travel around the continent, but it was all worth it in the end.” 

“Seems like you had a rough trip,” Steve said. “I still wish I could’ve known that you were back so that I could’ve helped you somehow.”

“In case you’re asking, I didn’t always look this old,” Bruce said, gesturing at his full head of white hair. “I’d look middle-aged too if I hadn’t undergone some serious stress going between Elysium and Earth. I still don’t know what’s in the atmosphere here that accelerated my physical aging, but I’m working on analyzing the contents of the air right now. All things considered, you’re looking rather good for two hundred and ninety nine years, Steve.”

“Thanks,” Steve chuckled. “I use a cold compress as part of my skincare routine. Give it a try sometime.”

“One more thing: I recovered your hovercycle for you,” Bruce said. “I’ll upgrade it before we take back my tech and make contact with the Resistance.”

“You didn’t have to do any of this for us, Bruce,” Steve said. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Bruce replied. “Don’t make that face at me -- you’re making me feel bad. Of course I helped you; we’re friends.” 

There was another lull in the conversation after that. Steve’s bamboo spoon scraped the bottom of the tray. He set it to the side and looked at a spot on the wall while Bruce finished the last of his peas.

"There's something I want to ask you to do once James recovers," Bruce said quietly.

"What is it?"

"Come back with me to Elysium." 

Steve's hands gripped at the sheets covering his lower body. 

"Greater Humanity could do well with a man like you supporting them, Steve," Bruce said. "I’m making repairs to the spacecraft I landed here in. Once I get it up and running again, the three of us could all travel back to Elysium in just under two years of transit time. Think about it. You and James could be happy together there. You would only know peace for the rest of your lives." 

Steve thought back to the decades he'd spent with Bucky within Neo Columbia's walls watching a city supporting tens of thousands of peaceful, fulfilling lives rise from nothing, even if that happiness was built on the suffering of others. 

He remembered Aisha and the Resistance roaming the Virginia deserts, the sturdy residents of the mining town in the Appalachians who’d fought back against Neo Columbia’s military and won, Casey and Julian happily maintaining their old grain mill on the plains, and all the other people living their lives across the North American continent as best as they could. 

He remembered the boundless night sky over the Grand Canyon. 

He shook his head. "Thank you, Bruce, but I’ll have to turn down your offer. Bucky and I still have something to fight for here on Earth. I might be past my prime, but there’ll always be something for me to do for humanity. We're not leaving behind all the people who've made livelihoods for themselves here."

Bruce gave Steve a sidelong smile. He looked older than the last time Steve had seen him, much older, but the Bruce with whom Steve had once fought against extraterrestrial threats was still there. "I knew you would say that, Cap. Ready to help me run an errand today?"

* * *

That errand, as it turned out, was retrieving communication technology which had been stolen from a local Resistance group by a Neo Columbian patrol. If Steve and Bruce could take that technology back, they would be able to instantly communicate with the regional leaders of the Resistance and coordinate a unified response to Neo Columbia’s expansionism.

The airship that Bruce pulled out of the hangar for said errand was a model that Steve had never seen before. Apparently it was constructed of space metals from Elysium’s neighboring asteroids using blueprints that Bruce had brought with him to Earth. Steve marvelled at its smooth surfaces and efficiently minimalist design, where each and every panel seemingly housed a dozen functions and storage units at once. 

Since the airship was of a material undetectable by modern Earth’s sensor technology and could visually conceal itself in the atmosphere using hologram tech, it was as close as one could get to an invisible airplane in the modern day. Steve wished that he could’ve seen Bucky’s reaction to Bruce’s fancy new toy, but there was no time to waste in retrieving the communications tech. Besides, Bucky would have plenty of time to gawk at all of Bruce’s space tech himself once he woke up.

“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Bruce said from the cockpit as the airship smoothly rose above the treetops. “You’ll find some weapons and a new suit in the bathroom.”

“Roger that,” Steve said with a sloppy two-fingered salute. 

There was a skintight suit of body armor woven from a material Steve didn’t recognize waiting for him alongside several knives, grenades, firearms of various sizes and purposes, data transfer devices, and his wristwatch shield. Even though Bruce had never been as tactical as Natasha or Steve back in their days as Avengers, he apparently now knew his way around modern weapons and infiltration tactics after his years in space. 

Just as Steve finished securing his body armor in place, the airship began its gradual descent. Steve left the bathroom and looked out one of the side windows in the hull. They had arrived. 

Aegis Project Settlement 2, as Bruce had dubbed it in the informal mission briefing, was a hollow shell devoid of Neo Columbia’s life and energy. No holograms or lights twinkled between its towering buildings, and no metal-bodied pedestrians bustled between its wide, open streets. There was only the profound emptiness of a bleached skeleton embedded in the barren sand. 

Steve wondered if Neo Columbia would look just like this if it lacked a vibrant populace filling its airy walkways and bustling streets.

The airship maintained a steady cruising altitude several hundred feet above the skyscrapers before descending as it reached the center of the empty settlement. Where Tower Aegis should’ve stood, there was only an enormous gaping pit lined with cargo docks and harsh lights spiralling down into the darkness. 

“The signal originates from the bottom of this pit,” Bruce said. “Ready, Steve?”

“I’m as ready as I can ever be,” Steve replied, his protective helmet folding into place over his head. 

He leaned forward and plummeted deep into the pit below.

* * *

  
  


“After I dove out of the airship, Bruce and I fought our way through the subterranean tunnels, retrieved the communications tech, and made our way back here,” Steve finished. “That brings us to the present, where you wake up after a nice long nap and ask me what the hell happened while you were out. Feeling caught up yet, Buck?”

Bucky held up his hand. “Not yet. Give me a second to process all this.”

“I’ll give you all the time you need,” Steve said.

Bucky inhaled, then exhaled. “Let me get this straight. You and Bruce invaded a heavily guarded Aegis Project settlement without me and succeeded?” he said incredulously. “How the hell did you pull that off?”

“All those serum-enhanced super soldiers meant nothing to me when I had a Bucky to save,” Steve said. “Besides, the fight itself wasn’t the important part -- saving you in the end was.”

Bucky reached out and stroked Steve’s cheek with his thumb. “You fucking sap.”

“Only for you, sweetheart,” Steve said easily. He closed the distance and pressed his lips to Bucky’s, soft and sweet. Bucky kissed back, slowly stroking his fingers along the hairs at Steve’s nape.

Even though Bucky’s breath tasted stale and their unshaved beards scraped together, Steve wouldn’t have traded that moment for anything in the world.

Steve pulled away after a moment so that he could meet Bucky’s gaze, though their faces were still close enough to each other’s that they almost shared the same breath. 

“When I said that the only noteworthy part of invading Settlement 2 was saving you in the end, I really meant it,” Steve said quietly. “When I look back at the past, I remember the moments I spent with you most of all. I know I’ll feel the same way twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now. That’s what matters most to me. Always.”

“Always.” Bucky echoed. “That’s not a word I thought would ever describe us, punk. First you were about to die on me practically every Sunday, then you and Peggy got that weird flirtation going on and I thought you would leave me, and then  _ I  _ practically died, twice, and yet we’re somehow married and nearly three hundred years old now.”

“Seems like some greater power out there wants us alive,” Steve quipped. “You could say that there’s a damn good reason that we’re still kicking after all this time.”

“And that damn good reason is the reason why you’re big and I have no existing records predating the twenty-second century.” Bucky laughed. “I don’t know whether the world is better or worse off with us in it, frankly.”

“Either way, we still have a chance to make it better,” Steve insisted.

“Speaking of which, did Bruce clear me for active duty yet?” Bucky asked. “I think I can walk now, but I don’t want the doc Hulking out on me if he sees me out and about.”

“He said that you should’ve completely recovered by the time you woke from your coma,” Steve said. “Besides, he’s good with the big guy right now. You’ll be fine either way.”

“That’s good, ‘cause I was getting sick and tired of sitting here without you,” Bucky said. “Help me out, will you?”

“Can do,” Steve affirmed, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s shoulders. With some maneuvering, he pulled Bucky into a standing position next to the bed.

“Can you stand by yourself?” Steve asked.

“‘Course I can,” Bucky said. “Take your big hands off of me for a second and you’ll see.”

Steve removed his hands. Bucky didn’t so much as wobble as he jumped forward and pulled Steve into a crushing hug.

“Missed you,” Steve admitted into Bucky’s shoulder.

“I missed you too for all of the two seconds it took you to ask if I was feeling alright when I woke up,” Bucky replied.

Steve lightly punched Bucky’s shoulder. “Jerk.”

“Punk.” 

The communication device on the nightstand lit up, signalling an incoming transmission. Steve knew that the transmission was coming from the signal tower on the other side of the compound where Bruce had holed himself up for the past few days.

  
_ “This is your Captain speaking,” _ Steve’s pre-recorded voice said from the communication device, clean and crisp.  _ “I’m reaching out to you on behalf of humanity and the common  _ _ will of the people…” _

“Seems like we’ve done our job here,” Bucky said. “How does taking the hovercycle out for a spin sound? I’ll drive this time.”

Steve slung his arm over Bucky’s shoulder. “Where are we going?”

Bucky gave him a smirk. “To the future.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter will be the epilogue! Thank you for sticking with this fic!


	7. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fifty years pass by.

Bucky’s eyes only barely glanced over the date listed on the clock hanging over the mantelpiece before he sank down into the dingy couch and switched the entertainment hologram on using his favorite vintage-style handheld remote. A news broadcast appeared on the hologram screen featuring a television anchor with curls of hair piled upon her head and a smile so blindingly bright that it could turn rainforests into deserts. 

Bucky clicked a button on the remote. The next channel was showing a low-budget soppy romance flick, so he begrudgingly switched back to the news broadcast and watched.

_ Today marks a joyous day for all residents of Neo Columbia,  _ the news anchor said in an overly cheery voice.  _ Not only does this year commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of Neo Columbia’s founding, but we are also three decades out from the uprising that changed all of our lives forever! _

_ Feels like just yesterday to our older viewers, doesn’t it? Sure, a lot happened in those thirty years, but time flies by when you’re restructuring society from the bottom up! _

_ For our viewers who need some brushing up on their history, we celebrate this day to remember the largely peaceful Resistance rebellion that united desert outsiders with the lower-class residents of Neo Columbia. Thanks to them, the corrupt politicians of the past were overthrown, and the walls and borders surrounding this city were demolished in favor of erecting equitable connections with the border groups of the Virginia deserts. We now all benefit from a society that works to treat all people fairly, no matter where they come from. _

_ While this day has roots in drunken partying, grocery store sales, and highly exclusive events held in the Tower, as some may still remember, our national traditions have evolved since then. In the modern day, we commemorate this occasion by partaking in local feasts and celebrations that welcome all residents regardless of income. We also give back to our communities by pooling together resources to support those in need. As some say, we best honor our roots in giving humanity hope for the future by making a future that everyone can believe in. _

_ Of course, who can forget the public light shows and entertainment acts launched from Tower Aegis for all to enjoy in the evening? While every district and nearby settlement puts their own spin on the celebrations, we always make sure that everyone can enjoy the holiday no matter where they live.  _

_ Personally, I’m looking forward most to the gift swap that my district is holding in a few hours. My husband can’t wait to meet some of the outsiders who come visit for the grand celebrations every year. And I know that my daughter will be looking forward to her school friends receiving new clothes and toys from the community during the celebrations. There’s something for all to enjoy! _

__

_ That finishes our report on today’s celebrations. I hope that all of you at home are enjoying a festive Independence Day. Remember, we’re stronger when we all work together, so be sure to check on all of your neighbors today and enjoy the communal feasts with your loved ones! _

_ Next up: Our correspondent Julie talks about the newest fads in teen fashion... _

At that point, Bucky zoned out. He turned down the volume on the broadcast and looked around, remembering where he was.

For the past few decades, he and Steve had moved from home to home, taking up residence wherever they were needed regardless of borders and affiliations. Their current apartment rested on the ground level of a mixed-income apartment building in an otherwise unassuming Neo Columbian border district. Outside the window, hovermobiles silently whizzed by over the pavement, their exteriors patched up with the newest in hovermobile tech thanks to government programs ensuring that everyone had access to a safe vehicle. 

Bucky glanced at the mirror hanging next to the bathroom door. He thought he saw a few more flecks of white in his hair than the last time he checked, though he may have been imagining things. While he and Steve didn’t have Thor’s eternal youth, they currently didn’t look as old as Bruce had fifty years ago. Even now, they still had long lives ahead of them.

Steve emerged from the bedroom with the quiet fizzling of the privacy hologram. His light footsteps squeaked across the polished floor just before his elbows sank into the sofa cushion behind Bucky’s head.

“Are you watching the news?” Steve asked. “Thought you were gonna get ready for our night out together.”

“I’ve been ready for the past half hour,” Bucky said. He looked over his shoulder into Steve’s baby blues. “I have all my knives and pistols secured in place underneath my clothes. I could probably take them all off and put them back on before you could even pull your socks on.”

“Touch é ,” Steve said, crossing his arms with a smile. “Say, how about a quick kiss before we hit the road?”

“Just one kiss,” Bucky allowed. “Make it a good one.”

“Come here and we’ll make it good together,” Steve invited, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. 

Bucky fondly rolled his eyes at Steve’s attempt at seduction. He hooked his leg on the back of the sofa, deftly landing on his feet on the other side as if he’d just cleared a maximum-security fence and not an ordinary piece of living room furniture. He wrapped his arms around Steve’s hips and pressed a kiss to his lips, faintly tasting coffee and mint toothpaste on his tongue.

No matter how many times Bucky embraced and kissed Steve like this, he would never tire of his husband’s warmth, of the firm muscles beneath old skin and warm breath filling old lungs. They broke the kiss simultaneously and lingered there, quietly looking into each other’s eyes with their arms wrapped around each other. 

“You know, the ground-level districts remind me a little of Brooklyn,” Steve said softly, brushing a stray strand of hair out of Bucky’s eyes. “The beat-up hovermobiles, the people carving lives for themselves in a world that wasn’t built for them -- all of it. That’s why I keep taking you back here.”

“We could stay here for a few more days if you want, pal,” Bucky replied. “There’s no rush. Bruce said that the next mission isn’t time-sensitive.”

For a moment, Steve seemed to consider the possibility. Then, he shook his head. “We’ll come back here again soon. Besides, we haven’t seen Bruce in a few months. Let’s finish our mission tomorrow and invite him out for dinner.”

“Give me one more kiss before we go, then,” Bucky said, pulling Steve closer.

Steve ran his thumb along Bucky’s jaw and chuckled, warm breath puffing against his chin. “Alright, alright. Just one more.”

This time, they took their time, lips slowly moving together, fingers tangling together with the cold press of matching wedding rings -- the same ones they’d worn ever since the twenty-first century. Steve was the one who pulled away, maintaining steady eye contact as he traced a pattern into Bucky’s hand.

“Love you,” Steve said as easily as breathing. 

“Love you too,” Bucky said, a smile spreading across his lips. Even though he’d heard those words many times before, he still felt warmth bloom in his chest. “Now go ahead and fire up the hovercycle. I’ll be right there behind you in a sec.”

After Steve left, Bucky turned back to the broadcast for a brief moment. The broadcast hologram was now a four-dimensional hologram of Tower Aegis extending from the floor to the ceiling replicating the light show that would happen at midnight that night. Beams of light shot out from the Tower’s hull into the air, filling the living room with a miniature meteor shower. Each beam of light would guide a generous gift package for a less fortunate Neo Columbian household unit to its destination.

While Bucky had only stepped inside Tower Aegis a handful of times after the restructuring of the Neo Columbian government, something about the tower’s glowing lights and smooth edges still stirred a sense of hope and promise in him. No matter how rotten the system had been, there was eventually a better, more just world that would rise from its ashes. That was what he and Steve fought to uphold on each and every mission.

The hologram Tower Aegis shrunk until it was a broadcast screen again, ending the miniature light show. With a flick of his finger, Bucky turned off the broadcast and followed Steve out of the apartment. If he’d listened just for one more minute, he would’ve heard these next words.

_ To close out our broadcast today, we’d like to read aloud some words of wisdom submitted anonymously by viewers like you. Today’s anonymous words of wisdom go as follows: _

_ To you in the past, think forward. _

_ To you in the present, look forward. _

_ To you in the future, move forward forevermore. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this ends "To You In The Future"! We've come a long way from the pitch I came up with all the way back in March. Once again, thank you to my artists luoniiel and MsPooslie for illustrating the bright colors and blinding lights of Neo Columbia. Thank you once more to dani_libertea for beta reading this fic on a tight schedule and helping me iron out the kinks. And thank you to the NASBB mods for making this whole event possible in the first place.
> 
> As for potential prequels/interquels/sequels, we'll have to see if inspiration strikes again for this cyberpunk post-apocalyptic AU. I've left plenty of room for exploring the characters and history of this world, though, so chances are I'll come back to this universe again someday. :)
> 
> If you want to follow me on social media, my Tumblr is diurnaldays, my Instagram is diurnal_days, and my Twitter is DiurnalDays. I mostly post art for other fandoms on my social media, but I do sometimes post writing WIPs too. If you liked this fic, please leave a comment if you'd like.


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